MY
MY FIGHTING LIFE
Photo: Hana Studios, Ltd.
_/^
My Fighting Life
BY
GEORGES GARPENTIER
(Champion Heavy-wight Boxer of
With Eleven Illustrations
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1920
To
All British Sportsmen
I dedicate this, The Story of My Life.
Were I of their own great country, I feel
I could have no surer, no warmer, no
more lasting place in their friendship
CONTENTS
CHAPTBX FAGB
1. I BECOME DESCAMPS' PUPIL ... 1
2. To PARIS 21
3. MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER BEGINS . . 30
4. I Box IN ENGLAND ..... 47
5. MY FIGHTS WITH LEDOUX, LEWIS, SULLIVAN
AND OTHERS ..... 51
6. I MEET THE ILLINOIS THUNDERBOLT . 68
7. MY FIGHTS WITH WELLS — AND A SEQUEL . 79
8. FIGHTS IN 1914 99
9. THE GREAT WAR : I BECOME A FLYING MAN 118
10. MILITARY BOXING ..... 133
11. ARRANGING THE BECKETT FIGHT . . 141
12. THE GREAT FIGHT 150
13. PSYCHOLOGY AND BOXING . . . 158
14. How I TRAINED TO MEET BECKETT . . 170
15. THE FUTURE OF BOXING : TRAINING HINTS
AND SECRETS . . . . .191
16. A CHAPTER ON FRA^OIS DESCAMPS . . 199
17. MEN I HAVE FOUGHT .... 225
ILLUSTRATIONS
GEORGES CARPENTIER .... Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
1. CARPENTIER AT THE AGE OF TWELVE . . 10
CARPENTIER AT THE AGE OF THIRTEEN . . 10
2. CARPENTIER (WHEN ELEVEN) WITH DESCAMPS . 24
CARPENTIER AND LEDOUX . . .24
3. M. DESCAMPS ...... 66
4. CARPENTIER WHEN AN AIRMAN . . .180
5. CARPENTIER AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN . 168
CARPENTIER TO-DAY . . .. .168
6. CARPENTIER IN FIGHTING TRIM . . . 226
7. M. AND Mme. GEORGES CARPENTIER . . 248
MY FIGHTING LIFE
CHAPTER I
I BECOME DESCAMPS' PUPIL
OUTSIDE my home in Paris many thousands of my
countrymen shouted and roared and screamed;
women tossed nosegays and blew kisses up to my
windows.
"Vive Carpentier! ' came from a mighty
chorus of voices. Paris was still in an ecstasy of
enthusiasm; my contest against Joe Beckett, so
swift, sensational, dramatic, incredible, remained
the wonder of the moment, and as I looked from
my window on to the street below I shook and
shivered.
My father, a man of Northern France — hard,
stern, unemotional — clutched the hand of my
mother, whose eyes were streaming wet. Albert,
also my two other brothers arid sister made a
strange group. They were transfixed. Francois
Descamps was pale; his ferret-like eyes blinked
meaninglessly. Only my dog, Flip, now I come to
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; '.unklfctstood — for he gave himself over
to howls of happiness. This day of unbounded joy
so burnt itself into my mind that I shall remember
it for all time.
"Georges, mon ami," exclaimed my father,
" no such moment did I ever think would come into
our lives."
And I understood.
My life, as I look back upon it, has been a round
of wonders. Twenty-six years ago I was born at
Lens. My father was employed at one of the local
collieries. His lot was a common one, our home
little and modest. When scarcely more than a
baby, I was earning a franc a day as a bicycle
messenger. My school days were over when the
nursery should have claimed me. Birth, circum-
stances, environment, the dull, narrow, parochial
circle into which I came, made me a man when I
was but a child. They tell me, though, that I was
happy, that in a precocious and mystical way I
would dream and prattle of adventure, of travel ;
that I had an insatiable love of reading ; that I was
given to wondering ; that restlessness seized me from
the days when I could but toddle, and there were
moments when my mother despaired of my future.
I conjured up the day when I would go far away
I Become Descamps' Pupil
from Lens, and the yearning to go afield was
quickened by visits to the neighbourhood of circuses,
which have ever been a source of joy to the young
folk of the French provinces. It was a peep which
I took into one of these travelling circuses that had
nearly all to do with shaping my career. For as I
beheld a man, whom I decided was the most
remarkable of all performers on the trapeze, I
sought on many days afterwards to get the consent
of my parents to join a troupe of acrobats, for
already I had acquired the art of tumbling, and I
was counted by my friends to be a contortionist of
uncommon ability.
In her simple, homely way my mother would
take hold of me and enlarge upon the wickedness
of my desires. But good, persuasive soul though
she was, she could not wean me of my fondness for
the circus, and it chanced one day that a travelling
boxing booth was pitched in Lens.
The proprietor of it was a hard-bitten fellow;
in his troupe were several much-battered English
boxers. I can see them now. In singlets once
white, and in them holes that told of days of lean-
ness, they stood on a raised platform like mutes,
the while their proprietor invited young men to come
inside and box with them. I yielded to the invita-
tion, though I had not only never seen an English
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My Fighting Life
boxer, but I had not even handled a boxing glove.
What precisely happened I shall never know, but
after I had had my "fight " I was asked to become
one of the troupe. The idea fascinated me ; I would
have gone with the booth there and then had I not
promised my mother that I would never go away
without telling her.
The prospect of my becoming a boxer horrified
her. That she had not the faintest notion of what
boxing was did not deter her from painting a lurid
picture of my future. I pleaded with her; I coaxed
and cajoled, but she was unbending. And I was
sad. But the passion to learn to box after the fashion
of the English burned furiously within me.
The desire to go into the world as an acrobat
vanished, and for long did I think and dream and
wonder about the strange fellows of the boxing
booth. That they — rough, uncouth men — could and
did dare to drop into this and that town and lay low,
all and sundry by their art, their skill, their science,
bordered on the miraculous.
And there came a day when I learned that in
Lens there was one " Professor Descamps, teacher
of la boxe Anglais." Folk of my neighbourhood,
so curious and extraordinary was " the Professor,"
spoke of him as a "mystery man." It was voted
that he dabbled in magic. A lone, misunderstood
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
man was Frangois Descamps. That he .was not of
the coal-fields, that he was of a world different from
his fellows, put him in a position of almost awful
isolation. Francois Descamps was feared because
many remarkable tales were woven around him, and
because he was feared I was drawn to him as if by
some magnet.
So to his house did I go. I found him alone in
his gymnasium, which was a small room. Had I
dared, I would have laughed outright, for there he
was rushing here and there, his fists clenched, his
lips pressed tight, his eyes had red in them; he
was waging the most terrible of battles against —
Nobody.
It was not until after many days that I discovered
that he was doing nothing more serious than shadow-
boxing.
" And ;what do you want? " he asked. " Why
come you here? '!
There was something in the good Francois that
I had not discovered in any other man of Lens.
His voice, his intense eagerness, his little, keen,
stabbing eyes, drew me to him. I confess, however,
that the story I told came haltingly. It was that
I desired to become one of his pupils. He laughed
in his queer, hearty fashion, and stroked my pale,
thin face.
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My Fighting Life
" You would box, eh? But you are too young,
too tiny. Come to me when you have grown."
" But I can box already. I have boxed at the
booth. I want to fight like the English, and you
are the Professor, eh? " I replied.
And with mock ceremony Francois took and put
on my baby hands a pair of monstrously big gloves.
We sparred a couple of rounds, and then I was sent
home. The sequel to my visit to the Professor was
soon to come, for two or three days later Descamps,
to my great joy, told me that he had interviewed
my parents, and it had been decided that he might
take me as his pupil. This I learned one winter's
evening in his gymnasium. In the centre of it a
log fire blazed merrily, an oil lamp burned in a tired
way, and three or four tallow candles flickered.
Taking me on his knee, he explained in language
extravagant and fantastical his ambition:
" You, my Georges, are now my pupil. I am
your master, your father, your mother, your all.
Through you I will give to France a great fighter,
the champion of your country ; you shall go to Paris,
to England. Before you are a man you shall have a
fortune. This day a new and greater athletic France
has been born. For it is Professor Descamps who
says so." And until the night grew old he revelled
in stories all romance and dazzling colours.
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
And I was intoxicated with it all. From that
night until the present day there has existed
between Descamps and myself a bond of sympathy
— a complete and perfect understanding that it were
impossible to destroy.
Perhaps you would know this Francois Descamps.
A little, square man, these opulent days — for he is
an important and rich manufacturer of aldermanic
proportions — I believe, because of his quaintness,
he has no counterpart. His head, that tells of
uncommon intelligence, is set off by hair, thick and
brittle ; before the war it was coal black, now it is
splashed with grey. His face is moon- shape ; it has
much red in it. His eyes are two little slits, and
they speak of merriment ; his voice is inclined to
shrillness; his gift of language is marvellous. He
will talk at express speed for a day and a night, and
suffer no exhaustion. That which he possesses has
come to him by hard, unceasing work, and by the
great optimism that is within him. He is at once
a comedian, a philosopher and an exceedingly
prosperous man of business. Generous he is, and
yet there is no harder bargain maker.
He was a poor, struggling young man when he
took me as his pupil, but there was no iron in his
soul. Yet he was the rarest contradiction I have
ever known. Principally his mission and purpose in
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My Fighting Life
life was to teach physical culture and boxing. A
more eloquent preacher of the gospel of bodily fit-
ness never was, and yet in the early days of our
association he was a Socialist of a completely
aggressive, pugnacious type. There was a time
when folk whispered that he was anarchist, but this
mainly because he was so strangely different from
his neighbours. The fact that he set himself up as
a teacher of boxing, that he talked and lived for
fighting, bred much understanding between us.
When I went to him his pupils were distressingly
few, and francs came to him fitfully. But when
times were hardest and luxuries rare, his optimism,
his belief in himself, his belief in me, was greatest.
He would say, " Georges, my son, there is no
money, but to-morrow there will be plenty ! ' And
we would struggle together. From the first day I
went with him I found that I was made for boxing ;
it appealed to me as a perfectly natural game, and
very soon I was able to stand up and beat boys much
bigger and older than myself.
But Descamps would only speak of me cryptic-
ally, mysteriously, for a full year.
As in my training at Stanmore for my contest
with Beckett, I was prepared for the ring more or
less secretly. But, not only was I taught to box,
Descamps encouraged and developed my passion for
S
I Become Descamps' Pupil
gymnastics; he made me an expert tumbler and no
mean contortionist. He himself at night would
engage in conjuring and sleight-of-hand, and when
there came a period of especial leanness he let me
into a secret.
" On Sunday next," he said, " we will tour the
country cafes; I, as Professor Descamps, of Lens,
hypnotist, conjurer, boxer; you, as tumbler, con-
tortionist, and my medium. As such you will be
put into a trance and do thought-reading. It will
be easy, and the francs we want twill come to us;
we will conjure them out of the pockets of the
country-folk into our hats."
And there and then I was initiated into the
mysteries of hypnotism, or clairvoyance. What
glorious make-believe did we play ! Little did I
think as the result of our little rehearsals by which
we hoped to raise the wind that years later all
London would talk and say that I beat Joe Beckett
because I possessed the power to hypnotize. But of
the " hypnotic punch " I will .write later.
Having prepared a code by which I might tell
little inconsequential but intimate things and hap-
penings about men before whom we were about to
perform, we set out at the week-end on a ten-mile
tramp to amuse and interest the frequenters of the
countryside cafes. I must confess, though I could
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My Fighting Life
never deny anything asked of me by Descamps, that
I doubted the wisdom and success of our venture.
But Francois feared neither trouble nor failure.
We had come within sight of a cafe when
Descamps cried a halt. An old stringy carpet on
which I was to do my tumbling feats was spread on
the roadside so as to serve as a table at which we
might eat our luncheon. Descamps produced long
rolls of butter, bread, sausages and a bottle of cheap
red wine, and we partook of what my young and
splendid appetite made me believe was an entirely
sumptuous repast. Our stock of food having dis-
appeared, Descamps made me stay so that he might
" prospect." Away he went, singing and laughing,
and when he returned this is what he told me :
66 Georges, I have been to and supped at two
cafes that were very crowded, and I have had much
talk with the celebrities. At cafe No. 1 there will
be a farmer, dressed in homespun cloth of fearsome
pattern. I have learned that in recent days he has
had much trouble with his cattle. When I put you
in a trance this, which I now tell you, you must
say, softly, slowly, with your eyes closed, and the
while you are stiff and rigid."
And so did Descamps acquaint me with all the
local news as it closely concerned men who would
be at the cafes to which we were to go. Then, his
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
eyes romping with fiendish delight, he took from
his pocket a large sheet of paper, and on it he did
write this, his " play-till " :
VISIT TO OF THE
RENOWNED PROFESSOR DESCAMPS
AND HIS FAMOUS PUPIL
GEORGES CARPENTIER
DEMONSTRATIONS!
DEMONSTRATIONS!
DEMONSTRATIONS I
La Boxe Anglaise : PROFESSOR DESCAMPS and his
Famous Pupil GEORGES CARPENTIER
Acrobatics Acrobatics Acrobatics
GEORGES CARPENTIER
Le Conjurer Magnifique :
PROFESSOR DESCAMPS
Assisted by his Famous Pupil
GEORGES CARPENTIER
GRAND FINALE:
Hypnotism and Thought-Reading,
PROFESSOR DESCAMPS
Assisted by his Famous Pupil
GEORGES CARPENTIER
" And we do all this? " I asked, as Descamps
held his " play-bill " before my eyes and jumped
and capered.
My Fighting Life
" That and much more," I was assured. And
away we twent to batten upon the country yokels.
With a confidence and effrontery that staggered
me, Descamps took the proprietor by the arm, and
with a profound bow presented him with the " play-
bill." Then in his piping voice he rolled out his
prologue, while I stood riveted to the ground with
my tumbling-carpet tucked away under my arm.
What extraordinary, extravagant, impossible, unin-
telligible language did Descamps employ ! He
stormed, raved, gesticulated and screamed, so that
more than a score of simple folk stood open-
mouthed. They had neither the inclination nor the
brain to think about and analyse that which they
heard. Their mind was reduced to a jumble. All
they could do was to gaze stonily at " The Pro-
fessor v and his pale-faced, sickly-looking pupil.
They were not given an opportunity to recover
their equilibrium. They remained abnormal, utterly
perplexed and bewildered men.
So I set about tumbling and doing all manner
of acrobatics. Then " sleight-of-hand " — very crude
I fear it was, but it sufficed — by the Professor; la
boxe Anglais was voted to be marvellous, for we
sought to make the exposition the nearest approach
to murder; but the piece de resistance was the
hypnotic turn.
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
Before embarking upon it I learned for the
first time that which, of course, was untrue, that
Descamps had lived for many years among the
fakirs of the East; that, in fact, he had been a
fakir. And as became a fakir, he tore and pulled
his long black hair by way of helping him, so I
thought, to turn on a torrent of the wildest, weirdest,
the most ludicrous words ever uttered by man.
Snatching a chair, he bade me be seated. A
prodigious wink was the signal for me to be wholly
serious. Stalking up to me as if I were some
elusive thing, with outstretched arms, he peered
into my eyes, drew down the lids, passed his hands
before me, and gibbered and jabbered all the time.
A snap of his long fingers, a shrill hissing cry about
"the 'fluence," and, as per rehearsal, I half swooned,
and made my whole body as stiff as to suggest that
I had become petrified. I would put it on record
that before my bout of swooning, Descamps, on
whose hands was much white powder, stroked my
face, and by the time I had been put under the
magic spell I was deathly pale.
I suffered many violent convulsions during my
thought-reading demonstration. What were
counted secrets among strangers, such as we were,
I revealed, to the utter consternation of our
audience. We held these country folk in the hollow
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My Fighting Life
of our hands, and when I had answered Descamps'
last question — the answer to which question, you
must know, was indicated by the particular way in
which it was framed, it was supposed that we were
gifted with supernatural powers. Needless to say,
Descamps, as soon as he had snapped his fingers
and taken from me the 'fluence, held out the hat,
and on this Sunday we walked back to Lens richer
by some twenty-five francs.
During many week-ends we toured the country-
side and prospered. And we did win much fame;
our entertainment was keenly awaited by many
people.
Meantime I was learning and growing ; I ate
my boxing lessons greedily. I engaged in several
bouts for the mere love of fighting. Round and
about my home I won quite a reputation. With a
tenderness I shall never forget, Descamps nursed
me as he would his own son, but there came a time
when I grew petulant and would ask him when it
would be that I would have a match for money.
Always was it, "Soon," but I chafed because of
the indefiniteness of which this reply told, and one
night I did not present myself at the gymnasium
for my lesson. I stayed out very late with several
companions.
Without saying anything to me, Descamps
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
sought my mother and learned that I had not come
home until close on midnight. It was a very
sheepish boy that next day presented himself at the
Professor's academy.
"Shall we start to box at once?" asked Des-
camps.
I was entirely agreeable. We were putting
on the gloves when Descamps said, " You were out
late last night. Why ? ' ' And he leered in a strange
way as he struck a fighting attitude.
Never before had he hit so hard; he actually
fought, and, having worked me against the ropes,
he hissed, "Now I am going to teach you not to
stay out late any more. You have got to take your
gruel." I could tell by the fire in his eyes that he
intended to give me a sound thrashing, and the
chance of escape seemed terribly remote. Des-
camps came for me like someone possessed. Instinct
told me to side-step, and, feinting with my left, I
brought my right full to the jaw, and Descamps was
out to the world, as completely as was Joe Beckett
in our fight at the Holborn Stadium.
And do you know that as I went to the assistance
of the English champion and with the help of
Lenaers, the Belgian middle-weight, got him to his
corner, my mind went back to the night in the
Professor's gymnasium in Lens when my right hand
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My Fighting Life
reduced Descamps to temporary but complete
oblivion.
How I would have liked to have told the story
to that wonderful audience, out of which the Prince
of Wales, as I saw him, stood as a great human
man.
But of the knock-out of Francois Descamps.
When I caused him to drop like a log, I rushed to
his side and great tears ran down my cheeks. I
feared that I had hurt him seriously. I slapped his
face, I pulled and pinched his ears. I called
" Francois ! Francois, my Francois ! ' Opening
his eyes, he looked round and about him, and then
fell to laughing.
"Phew!" he blowed. "It is wonderful,
Georges. This is the greatest day of my life.
Your left so ; then your right so — wallop, finis.
Your Francois is no more. Georges, now I know
I am right. You will be a champion, for only a
champion could have knocked me out so."
I promised that I would never stay out late
again, and Francois, supremely happy, took the
cork off a bottle of red wine, and this was the toast
he offered in his grandiloquent style : " To Georges
Carpentier, Professor Descamps' famous pupil, the
future champion of all France ! '
A succession of little contests followed, arranged
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
so that they would impart to me a deeper know-
ledge of ring-craft. My name, as a boxer, spread
beyond Lens, and then one day, when I was four-
teen years of age, Descamps told me that the time
had arrived when I would fight seriously. My
opponent was to be a full-grown man named
Salmon, of whose fistic ability Mr. " Snowy " Law-
rence, a well-known trainer of racehorses and a fine
sportsman, thought highly. With the ready con-
sent of all parties he acted as referee. It was in
the latter part of 1908 that I fought Salmon at
Maison Laffitte, known the world over as a horse-
training centre.
Salmon, as I have said, was a fully-developed
man. He was little in height and light of weight ;
a bantam, as I was then. But he was all wire and
whipcord. As I look back, I doubt whether I have
ever met an opponent who was so strong, so un-
yielding, so fierce, so courageous. Every trainer,
every jockey, every stable-boy had a place at the
ring-side, and, as was natural, they shouted for
Salmon, who was of their world. They ridiculed
that I, "the baby from Lens" as they called me,
could beat their champion. I was so thin, so pale ;
scraggy, in fact.
The contest was scheduled for twenty rounds,
and so far as I was concerned I determined to fight
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until I dropped ; such, I am sure, was the frame of
mind in which Salmon entered into it. It was all
very terrible. The speed at which it was started
,was tremendous. Each of us scorned the idea of a
clinch; we insisted that it should be toe to toe, and
so long as we were on our feet no quarter should
be given. Hard knocks were given and taken with
gusto. It was declared that Salmon had never
fought better; they told me that I was wonderful,
and the pity was that the contest ended in a way
which everybody deplored.
In the thirteenth round Salmon, without the
least intention of doing so, hit me low, and he was
disqualified by Mr. Lawrence. Salmon was much
distressed; so, too, was I. I knew that the foul
was an accident, and when it was suggested that
there should be a return match both Descamps and
myself agreed to one immediately. I especially
wanted to learn what I really could do against such
a splendid fellow, and three weeks later we took the
ring a second time.
And what a different Salmon he was then. His
disqualification had hurt him, and when I stood up
to him I felt that he was a man who would have to
be killed before he surrendered. He had trained
so that there never was such a perfect little midget.
Oh, yes, I hit him hard, but although my heart and
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I Become Descamps' Pupil
soul were in every blow I could not hurt him ; he
.was like a brick wall. And when he hit me I felt
as if he were driving nails into my body.
The several hundred men and boys who looked
on shouted themselves hoarse. First this way and
then that way the fight would go. One minute I
was winning, then Salmon was in front.
Salmon boxed as if he were part of a perfectly
adjusted machine ; to me, he had the fighting
capacity of three men rolled into one. Very pitiable
spectacles both of us soon were; each of us .was
painted " red." My eyes were swelled and
blackened; my body pained; there were moments
when my head swam. But the biggest punch
Salmon landed never hurt me so much as it did
Descamps. The little man was in a shocking state
of mental torment, and he has told me since that
when he saw my legs begin to bend in the tenth
round he was for throwing a towel into the ring.
This, his intention, he whispered to me at the begin-
ning of the eleventh, and I so pleaded with him
to allow me to continue- — I even threatened that if
he threw up the sponge I would never fight again
— that he permitted me to fight on. The end came
in the eighteenth round, when Salmon knocked me
out.
In the scrap-book which I keep, it is recorded :
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My Fighting Life
' The child Carpentier was wonderful. He was a
human flash; he told Frenchmen of such boxing
as they had not dreamed of. Such a baby he is,
and yet such a man ! No one could have taught him
to box as he did against Salmon. He is a born
boxer, cool, calculating, precocious."
And yet Salmon beat me !
But it would have been miraculous had I
defeated this lion-hearted little man. Not only did
he possess almost unbelievable strength, but he
knew how to box stylishly and well. Had he em-
braced the ring as a profession, I am sure he would
have become one of the best boxers in the world.
But he never did his fighting for money only. He
loved the race-horse too much to exploit pugilism
for a living. I am proud to know that he won high
distinction in the saddle. He became one of the
most talented steeplechase jockeys in France, and
he counts among his triumphs his winning of the
Grand Steeplechase of Paris.
20
CHAPTER II
TO PARIS
IF there was little or no money in my two fights
with the jockey, Salmon, there was abundant glory,
and it was the stepping-stone to Paris — Paris, of
which I had always dreamed. My defeat smarted,
but I had the knowledge that Mr. " Snowy " Law-
rence and his good friends would redeem the promise
which they made : that they would bring me before
the notice of the promoters of the capital.
And very soon little paragraphs found their way
into the columns of the Paris newspapers about the
"fighting prodigy of Lens." In Paris an invasion
of American fighters had made boxing the fashion ;
La Savatte, of which Charlemont was such a re-
doubtable exponent — I, too, have practised the
science of La Savatte — was fast losing favour.
Willie Lewis, in my opinion one of the cleverest
men who ever put on a glove, had come to .my
country. Well-groomed, nicely-spoken, a man with
ideas and notions far removed from fighting — Willie
Lewis, then at his best, captured sporting France,
and there followed him from America two remark-
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able negroes — Sam McVea and Joe Jeannette, at
that time as near as possible world's champions.
They were negroes of a strikingly different type.
Joe Jeannette would pass for a bronze statue. He
was not coal black as was McVea; neither was he so
forbidding to look at. McVea was frankly a nigger ;
Jeannette, dark chocolate. A more attractive, even
handsome, negro I have never seen. And in his ways
he had none of the obtuseness of many coloured gen-
tlemen. He was quiet ; he did not swagger around
the cafes, nor did he go strutting along the boulevards.
Well, with Paris for the time being the Mecca
of the enterprising American pugilist, and the news
which from time to time filtered through to Lens
that France was afflicted with boxing madness, Des-
camps decided to present me to the people of the big
city at the earliest possible moment.
I suffered no ill effects from my gruelling fight
with Salmon; indeed, I was much benefited by it,
for although I returned from Maison Laffitte a rather
unprepossessing boy, I was filled with admiration for
the unexampled pluck and courage of the man
jockey. Until I met him I had only half experi-
enced the glories of gameness. Salmon taught me
what a delightful thing it was to fear nobody, and
from that day to this I have never quaked at the
possibility of a thrashing.
22
To Paris
I have frequently smiled when 1 have read about
"the good-looking Carpentier," and been told
"how. remarkable it is that after a hundred battles
his face does not tell of fighting." There have been
many times when I .would have been sorry had I
been presented to my mother. My career, from its
start, has been made up of hard, often terrible,
knocks. Few men of my age have been called upon
to suffer greater punishment. Fortunate I may have
been, but the road upon which I have trod to
fortune has been hard and stony. There have been
days and nights when I have despaired of realizing
my ambition — to beat each of the reigning cham-
pions of Great Britain and so qualify for the world's
title. Yet sadness has never seized me.
Perhaps my happy days were before the war;
as a boy, though poor and of my own choio* of a
world with but little kindness in it, the joy I squeezed
out of fighting my way to the hearts of the great
public was tremendous. And so when it was said
that I need have no doubts about my future because
I had fallen before Salmon, I readily believed Des-
camps when, in his majestic way, he said that I
should go to Paris and take a front place among the
pugilists of the day. That I was but a stripling,
ever so lean, never occurred to me for a moment.
Constant association with Descamps made me much
23
My Fighting Life
older than my years. Besides, though my body
appeared to be so frail, I vwas as hard as steel, and
by instinct, so it seemed, I had, even when a boy,
acquired the art of hitting with the force of a full-
grown man.
After the Salmon fight, I worked harder than
ever in the gymnasium ; ; when I was not actually
at work, Descamps, in the half-light of his man-
making factory, would tell me stories of the giants
of the ring, and in telling of them he gave his
imagination such play as to crowd into his tales a
colour and romance which gave me so intimately to
know the heroes of the ring, from its earliest days,
that I believed they were my every-day companions.
I had come to " The Professor's " Academy one
day to take my lessons as usual, and found the little
man in a wild state of excitement. "At last! " he
cried. " See ! " and he held in front of me a letter.
" This," he said, " is your passport to fortune."
What he meant I did not know, but I had the feeling
that something momentous was about to happen.
" We go to Paris, Georges! " he shouted.
When normality had returned to him, I was per-
mitted to know that MM. Theodore Vienne and
Victor Breyer (these times, the distinguished editor
of the Echo des Sports) had offered me a match, the
terms to be twenty-five francs if I lost ; double that
24
DESCAMPS AND CARPENTIER IN 1905
GARPENTIER AND LEDOUX
To Paris
sum if I .won. My opponent was to be Young
Warner, an Englishman, and the contest was to be
one of fifteen rounds. In addition to my prize, two
third-class return tickets from Lens to Paris were
to be provided.
Which offer we both decided was magnificent !
Descamps, most fastidious about appearances,
managed to buy what I was sure was the sweetest,
daintiest fighting dress ever made. Our Sunday
clothes were brushed and pressed, and on the event-
ful day he took me by the hand to the railway station
for the longest ride I had been privileged to take.
Not once during the journey did he talk about the
fight ; he gave himself over to spinning yarns that
made me laugh. With great good humour he en-
larged and coloured our weekly tours of the cafes,
and made of his mesmeric qualities a rollicking farce.
It was a relief to me when he declared that we had
had our last Sunday excursion.
To those who may imagine that my life had been
a bed of roses, I would tell of what happened upon
our arrival in Paris for my first fight. Both
strangers, it was only with difficulty that wre found
M. Vienne and his worthy partner; only after a long
and weary tramp. Descamps expected a reception
all cordiality as befitted "Professor Descamps and
his famous pupil," but truth to tell, there was no
25
My Fighting Life
warmth in our welcome. Merely were we told to
be ready to get into the ring at 8.30 in the evening.
Full five hours had to pass before that hour, and not
being rich enough to hire rooms we perforce spent
the interval before the fight at a cafe close by.
With glorious ceremony, I thought, Descamps
brought me to the ring, and he chuckled as I, with
the grand manner and the confidence of an old-timer,
he afterwards told me, bowed to the large audience.
I may have had the grand manner ; it is possible
that I appeared to be confident, but the fact was I
was half scared as I looked round and became con-
scious that two or three thousand people were star-
ing at me. I imagined that they were mocking at
my littleness ; I was positive that they were amused
at the ways of Francois, for the little man not only
insisted that he should be known as " the Professor,"
but the proprietor of a boy who was destined to
become champion of champions.
He must have appealed to everybody as the king
of a new race of seconds. Now, the more important
the occasion, the greater unconcern does Descamps
affect ; and his affectation makes for a pantomime,
for he could no more disguise his feelings than he
could jump over the moon. He is just so much
mercury. His manifestation of joy when he makes
the acquaintance of the man who is to fight me, his
26
To Paris
studied politeness, his broad humour, the little catchy
tunes he will hum as he arranges sponges, drinking
water and towels in my corner is so much make-
believe. For Descamps on days before and on the
night of each and every one of my fights so suffers
that his very soul is tortured. So I knew when he
brought me into the presence of the first Paris
crowd I had ever known, grinning like an overgrown
boy, that within him all was tumult.
I won the figEt against Warner in seven rounds,
the referee giving me the decision on a foul. So
between us, Descamps and myself netted fifty francs.
I made my debut in Paris on a Friday ; on the follow-
ing night Joe Jeannette and Sam McVea were to
fight in the same building in which I had fought
Warner, so Descamps decided that we should put
up at a neighbouring cafe and see the battle between
the negroes. " We can well afford lodgings and
food out of the fifty francs, and the promoter will
be happy to welcome ' the Professor ' and his famous
pupil to the ring-side. There will be no tickets to
buy," insisted Descamps. And we went to bed
indescribably happy.
The time for the fight, which had gripped all
Paris, had almost arrived. Without the building
there was a great crowd. Through it Descamps and
myself .wriggled. With a courtly bow Descamps
27
My Fighting Life
explained to the man at the box office that he was
" the professor of Lens," and he had with him " his
famous pupil, Georges Carpentier. My compliments
to Monsieur Vienne, and we would now take our
seats."
Something happened; a small explosion it was.
No sooner had Descamps asked for permission to
"go inside" than both he and myself were seized
by some stout gendarme and bundled into the street.
Oh ! the ignominy of it all ! Oh, the towering rage
of Descamps, and oh, the tears I shed !
But we consoled ourselves with the knowledge
that others could not afford to watch the fight, and
we remained in the street content to hear the shouts
and the cheers of those at the ring-side. Those of
you who know the history of the ring will remember
that it was a terrible, fierce fight ; a fight to a finish ;
that Jeannette was knocked down on numerous
occasions, only to rise and, eventually, win.
The contest over, Descamps, having carefully
counted how many francs remained, decided that it
was not possible to take lodgings on a second night.
So we spent the night in the open, waiting for the
first train to take us back to Lens.
In a year that was yet to come I fought Joe Jean-
nette for the very promoter who paid me fifty francs
for my first fight and denied us two free tickets.
28
To Paris
The price he paid me for my contest with Joe Jean-
nette, which was at Lunar Park in March, 1914,
was £4,000 !
But it was a hard and stony road we were obliged
to travel before that memorable day on which I met
the black Adonis from Hoboken. And yet, though
money was not plentiful, though mostly did high
hopes and enthusiasm keep us going, Descamps and
myself were never unhappy. You could not be un-
happy with Francois. And so after my conquest in
Paris, he rested me a while, deciding not to venture
into the capital again until I had fought round about
my home.
CHAPTER III
MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER BEGINS
IT was in 1910, after various little skirmishes that
are not in official records, that I became regularly
employed. One Galliard, ,who was especially strong
and quite a man, threw out a challenge to me. He
had done much fighting and had more than a local
reputation. Descamps matched me against him, and
we met at Lens. This was the first serious appear-
ance before my own people, and the occasion beat
up much excitement.
It was a stiff, wearing fight for a lad such as I
was to engage in. Everything was against me — age,
height, weight and experience. They tell me that
I fought like one possessed, but I freely admit that
there were moments when I feared that I would have
to yield to the strength of Galliard. He hit me
harder than I could hit him, but though he punished
me much, I did my boxing better than he did, and at
the end of ten rounds I was declared to have won.
There was much joy in my home, and even my
father and mother who, truth to tell, had never looked
kindly upon fighting, agreed that some day I might
30
My Professional Career Begins
win renown in the ring. Without telling me what
they thought, they ceased to try to discourage me
from " going about the country inviting to be killed,"
and my heart grew bigger, for I wanted my father
and mother to be in sympathy with me.
Descamps derived greater pleasure from my de-
feat of Galliard than he did out of my victory in Paris
against Warner, and in his quaint, strange way he
would whisper on nights, " Georges, you must be
prepared to fight every day in the week if I ask you
to do so, for see " And then he would flourish
some newspaper in which he, in language flamboyant,
had caused stories to appear about the "wonders"
of " the child boxer of Lens."
And it came about that an offer came to me to
meet Wally Pickard, known as the English jockey
boxer, in Brussels. Let me tell you something of
this Pickard, for of all men who ever took the ring he
is the most humorous. If he had not taken to fight-
ing he would surely have made a fortune as a
comedian. I do not think it is generally known that
for years he was employed in the racing stables at
Chantilly, and that when the Belsize Boxing Club of
London invited various French boxers to appear at
the National Sporting Club, Pickard, as Louis d'Or,
passed as one of my countrymen. And, so I have
read, it .was he who caused Englishmen to say that
31
My Fighting Life
there was hope that some day France would have
great boxers.
It was never suspected that Pickard was English
to the backbone. However, speaking French fluently
and masquerading as Louis d'Or, he was accepted as
a Frenchman. Since my fight with him at Brussels
I have frequently seen him in expositions, and a
funnier man I have never gazed upon. He is short,
snub-nosed ; nowadays his hair is cruelly thin, and
you would say that he belonged to an age long gone.
But even now he is a contortionist, tumbler and
fighter rolled into one, and 'I have often wondered
why he does not, with Joe Bowker as partner, foi
instance, do his extravagant, side-splitting burlesque
on boxing more frequently.
Of course, when I stood up against him in Brussel:
he was out for a very serious fight, and yet there wa
broad humour writ all over his old-fashioned fac<
when he saw in me a slip of a boy. He seemed t<
be saying, " Wally, my boy, fighting is my game
and here they have put up a child." However
though he pulled out of himself tricks that often be
wildered me and set the onlookers laughing by hi
dodging and ducking and side-stepping, I think h
will admit that I gave him a tremendous thrashing
At all events, though I was not so subtle as he wai
I knocked him out in the eighth round, and, like tic
32
My Professional Career Begins
good man he is, the moment he came back to life he
was most generous in his praises. Do you know, if
Wally Pickard had not seen so much fun in fighting
he would not be spending his days doing his 4 * scream-
ing travesties."
My defeat of Pickard won for me the heart of
the Brussels people. They did not then know very
much of boxing ; much of it was foreign to them, but
they professed that it was a game after their own
hearts, and no sooner had I triumphed over Pickard
than various sportsmen of Liege would have me come
and appear before them. They felt that in a young
man named Lampin they had a boxer who would be
more than a match for me. And so very soon I
was in the ring against Lampin.
What happened to him was precisely .what hap-
pened to Pickard. I knocked him out in the
eighth round, and the good folk of Liege said,
" So soon as you are free to return to us, so soon
shall you have another match." Which was agreed
upon.
But first, Brussels people had gone to England
and brought back with them Buck Shine. He does
not fight now, but at that period he was a regular
performer for England, and though not in champion-
ship class, had had many contests, and was regarded
as an uncompromising fighter. He was, in fact, a
D 33
My Fighting Life
seasoned pugilist, and when I come to think, it could
have only been the 'blind belief that Descamps had
in me that caused him to allow me to measure my
strength against this Englishman.
Buck Shine, in appearance, fitted the popular con-
ception of a pugilist. His build, his face, his general
make-up, advertised his calling, and when I got into
the ring I thought he was a particularly tough-looking
fellow — and he was. He was so hard that I could
not hurt him. For six rounds I boxed with such
skill that I drew far ahead on points, but then I grew
tired. My legs would not move quickly; my arms
grew limp, and there was only fire in my soul. His
greater poundage, his man's frame were too much
for me and I lost. But the satisfaction I had that I
kept my feet until the last of ten rounds gave me
great comfort of mind. For it was declared, such
were the disadvantages I had to contend with, that
my defeat was a glorious one. I knew I would go
forward. I have not seen or heard of Buck Shine
since, but I would like to tell him that though he
beat me he helped me immensely.
The Belgian people were so kind to me that I
decided to have another fight before them at the
earliest possible moment ; and very shortly afterwards
I received a second call from Liege, there to en-
counter H. Marchand, who was thought to be one of
34
My Professional Career Begins
the most promising of my countrymen. I knocked
out Marchand in seven rounds.
Offers of engagements now came fast ; now I was
beginning to earn what I thought to be fabulous
wealth. As much as 150 and even 200 francs did I
receive in a single night, and I was able to begin
to build up a fortune. Little did I suspect that
in four short years I would be worth a million
francs, and that a war would then come and swallow
it up!
However, following my victory against Marchand,
MM. Vienne and Victor Breyer sent a request that
I should come to Paris and box Young Snowball,
these days known as Ted Broadribb. Like Des-
camps, I had determined to have all the fights offered
me, but neither of us knew much, if anything, about
English boxers. We certainly did not suspect that
at that time Young Snowball, as he was called, was
close to championship class, and it chanced that I
suffered.
We met at Wonderland on April 9, 1910, and I
was then sixteen years of age. The contest was to
have been one of ten rounds. Snowball, as I saw
him on that night, was a little man with much curly
hair and a cherubic face. That he was all vicious-
ness I never thought. Well, he brought disenchant-
ment and at the time much sorrow to me. He not
3S
My Fighting Life
only beat me as completely as any man could do, but
he drove it into my mind that " the fighting
prodigy," as I was then termed, was a creature of
fancy — an idol with feet of clay.
In less than a round Snowball had taken full stock
of me, and in his hands I was so much molten metal ;
it was possible for him to do what he pleased. In
the second round he cut me to ribbons. He was a
monster ; he gave me neither time to think nor won-
der; he battered my face, he crashed into my ribs,
and I saw many stars. Descamps had already been
reduced to tears. At the end of the first round he
was all for my giving in ; he feared that I would be
killed. Deep down in me I knew that I was asking
to be slaughtered, but I refused to listen to the en-
treaties of Francois. Now, quitting is the one thing
a fighter, to be worthy of the name, will not do.
Physical pain should never cause him to give up ; he
must fight on until he drops.
In the third round Snowball used me very much
as if I were a punching-bag. He outboxed me, he
outfought me ; in every possible way he was my
superior. Strong, a man with a quick, alert brain
and with the heart of a lion, the wonder was that he
did not knock me clean out of the ring. How I
managed to hold up under the hurricane of blows he
showered on me I shall never be able to understand.
36
My Professional Career Begins
I can feel this crimpled-haired man with pink and
white cheeks now — always, always, always smashing
me to pieces.
Into the fourth round did I enter slowly tottering,
but with a determination to do or die. I hoped
to regain full use of my legs. I forced myself to
believe that the limpness in the arms which had seized
them would disappear, but, no — Snowball remained
a demon. I could do nothing against him, and when
I was hobbling hopelessly Descamps set up one sharp,
harsh shout of despair and threw a towel into the ring
as an admission of defeat.
I was too sick, too weary to protest, and I per-
mitted him to caress and nurse me. As soon as I
could crawl I sought out Snowball and offered to him
my congratulations. He had beaten me like a sports-
man, and everybody who was present at the ringside
took their hats off to him. Few English boxers have
come to France to win so many friends as Snowball
did. How he failed to become champion, and why
he disappeared from the game when he was in his
prime I do not know. After his victory over me he
went to America, but he told me that he failed to get
acclimatized and could do himself no justice at all.
Still, his retirement came to me as a great sur-
prise. I would like to tell this little story about
Snowball.
37
My Fighting Life
When I had my second fight with Bombardier
Wells, he came to me and said he would regard it
as a high honour if he were allowed to be one of my
seconds. " I have surely earned the privilege," he
said, " for, you know, I am one of the very few
men who have beaten you, and what is more,
given you the hiding of your life. Do you re-
member? '
Yes, I did remember. My fight with Snowball
I can never forget.
It is astonishing when you are fit and well and
you have ambitions how quickly you can recover from
some unexpected, even awful happening. I did not
sit down and brood over my defeat by Snowball. If
you would know, I profited by it ; it helped me to
think less of the extravagant stories of my skill that
from time to time appeared in the papers. I steeled
myself against petting and flattery. I decided
that I was merely an everyday fighter, who must
accept smoothness and roughness with equal cheer-
fulness.
But my pride had been cut and slashed by my
defeat by Snowball. I was deaf and unmindful of
the fact that I was only a boy and had gone down
before one of the best fighters at that time in Eng-
land ; it was the knowledge that I had failed in Paris
—the Paris I was for ever dreaming about — the Paris
38
My Professional Career Begins
that I yearned to capture, and I pleaded with Des-
camps to seek a match for me in the capital on the
earliest day.
There was at the time, doing much splendid box-
ing, Paul Til ; all Frenchmen were talking about him.
So Descamps let it be known that his pupil was ready
to fight him. And very soon to Paris did I go to
engage with Til, and the contest helped to wipe out
the memory of my experience against Snowball, for
against this accomplished Frenchman I drew. Which
draw, I knew, was the greatest performance I had
yet achieved. Thereafter, I went from victory to
victory, until I lost to Henry Piet, brave soul, who
was killed in the war. But before I met Piet — all
Englishmen will remember him for his good style
and rare fighting qualities — I won ten contests against
strikingly different men. Immediately after Paul Til
came one Cuny.
If I were asked, I would say that the turning
point in my career came when I met Cuny. We
fought on August 14, 1910, at Cabourg, a fashion-
able seaside resort, under the auspices of the
management of the Casino — my terms, two third-
class return tickets from Lens and fifty francs. All
English boxing enthusiasts do not know Cuny ; very
few of them have seen him. No champion was he,
but in his way a great man, and one who had much
39
My Fighting Life
to do with giving France a place among the boxing
nations of the world.
If you were to see him now, you would scarcely
imagine that he was once a pugilist. He has a queer,
old-fashioned face ; his eyes are large, saucer-like ; he
is sparsely built. In dress, in appearance, he is not
like a typical Frenchman at all. In recent years he
has been ring-master at all the notable contests in
France — Directeur du Combat, is his official descrip-
tion— and very properly he is regarded as the first
teacher of the " noble art " in my country. Shrewd,
careful, a born disciplinarian is Cuny. And I include
him amongst my best friends, though in 1910 I
thrashed him harder than he had ever been thrashed
before or since. Our fight at Cabourg was not held
to be the star turn by any means. If my memory
serves me aright, the fight of the evening was an
affair between that very strong Englishman Arthur
Evernden and Henry Piet.
It was not expected that I would give any more
than an interesting exposition; the idea that I
would beat Cuny was ridiculous. This is what
happened :
For eight rounds I was his master, and everybody
screamed with delight. Seldom, if ever, have I boxed
so well or so skilfully as I did on that day. I know
that I never met a more gallant opponent. Cuny has
40
My Professional Career Begins
since told me that I befooled him, and that at the time
he felt that no boxer could have been more humiliated
than he was. For he would have it : " You were but
a baby, scarce heard of. You were incredible, for
you nearly murdered me."
The contest was in its infancy when Cuny's face
was splashed all over with blood. It seemed that
every time I hit him blood started to trickle from
some fresh place, and the crowd, at first, open-eyed
and open-mouthed at the spectacle, began to shout
for the referee, who was M. Victor Breyer, to stop
the fight. But the harder I hit Cuny, the more
insistent was he on continuing. I imagined I
could hear him say : " I stop only when I have been
killed." I tried in every way to knock him out.
It would have been a merciful thing for me to
have done, but I did not possess the strength to
do so.
In the third round M. Breyer, who feared a scene,
went to Cuny and asked him to retire. The sug-
gestion that he should surrender he treated with
contempt; but in the eighth round M. Breyer, un-
heeding the protests of Cuny, ordered the fight to
stop, and I was returned the winner.
Quite a scene followed. Cuny, weak and bat-
tered and bleeding, stormed and raved and begged
to be allowed to go on fighting.
41
My Fighting Life
As I sat in my corner and looked at him I
could have cried. He tugged so as to break away
from his seconds as they tried to carry him to his
dressing-room.
With the Englishman Young Warner I had my
second match shortly afterwards. We took the ring
at Cambrai, and, as on the first occasion, I knocked
him out in the seventh round. I subsequently drew,
after ten rounds, with the Frenchman Andony, at
Brussels; won against Young Wilson, of England,
in Paris on points ; a week or two later I knocked
out Jim Campbell, also of England, in Paris, in five
rounds, and then I was matched against the Belgian
lightweight champion, Demlin (who has appeared at
the National Sporting Club), at Brussels. I beat Dem-
lin in ten rounds on points, and towards the end of
1910 there came from England to Paris Jack Daniels,
a rough-and-ready fighter. I stood up against him for
ten rounds, but beat him. Then followed Brochet,
a Frenchman, of much promise. We fought at
Lens, and I knocked him out in seven rounds. Twice
within a few weeks I beat George Randall, each
time in Paris, where by this time I had become a
vogue.
My dream had by now come true. I had become
one of the fighting attractions of Paris. My defeat
by Piet was followed by a second victory over Jack
42
My Professional Career Begins
Daniels, and very soon afterwards I was the winner
against Jack Meekins and Young Nipper, both of
London. Sid Stagg, George Colborne, Frank
Loughrey, and Eustace, in turn, fell before me, and
in July, 1911, I met and knocked out in four rounds
Jack Golds wain.
This Goldswain was the first Englishman I en-
countered who held a championship. When we
fought, he was past his prime, but I myself and
others, because of his vast experience, his undeniable
cleverness and known capacity to take and give
punishment, were more than half afraid that he would
prove too much for me. In appearance Goldswain,
when put beside me, looked a very old man, and his
face told of many gruelling battles. The contrast
which we struck was much remarked upon, and I
must confess that I felt guilty of considerable im-
pudence in daring to face such a pugilist, who was
once the best light-weight in Great Britain, and that
at a period when there were many men of his weight
of much merit.
At this time, when I allowed myself to be free to
engage in any fight that might be offered to me, I
believe I was at my very best. I beat Goldswain,
and decisively. The veteran, for such did I regard
him, was naturally very crestfallen, but he did
not go away from Paris without paying high and
43
My Fighting Life
encouraging compliments to me. I have never
met an Englishman who was not a chivalrous
opponent.
Following Golds wain, Arthur Evernden crossed
from England to France a week or two later.
Evernden, an uncommonly strong fellow, was looked
upon as a future champion ; it was agreed that there
were few at his weight better than he was, and the
purpose of my being matched against him was to get
a clearer and more definite idea of how I would fare
against an actual champion.
My preparation for the contest was tremendously
severe. I felt that if I had to strike my flag to
Evernden I should have to put on one side the desire
I then had of going to England. We fought at
Cabourg, where my battle with Cuny had won for
me much popularity.
Evernden proved to be all that he had been re-
ported to be — as hard as nails, and as strong as a
bull. I understand that once upon a time he had
been a blacksmith, and, believe me, there were
moments when he made me imagine that he had a
hammer stowed away in his glove. We fought fifteen
rounds, every one of which was crowded with inci-
dent, and there was a period when I doubted whether
I should win.
My blows made little impression upon the iron
44
My Professional Career Begins
frame of Evernden, so I devoted myself to making
points; it was impossible to knock him out. I ,was
declared to be the winner at the finish. This fight
took much out of me ; it left me very tired, and I was
a very jaded young man when in the following month
I took the ring against Dixie Kid, whose real name is
Aaron Brown.
He is a negro; something of the monkey about
him. For one who is scarcely of medium height, he
has a phenomenal reach. His arms are gorilla like,
and I frankly admit that I did not relish his appear-
ance at all. There were many puckers in his face,
which was very old, and he had a cauliflower ear. I
often wonder how old Dixie Kid was when I met
him in 1911 in Trouville. He professed to be a
young man, but I am sure he was old enough to be
my father. One of a small army of black boxers
who had found their way to Paris from America, he
was one of the most extraordinary men I have ever
been called upon to fight. He scarcely seemed
human ; he was certainly abnormal ; not a nice man
at all. The moment I saw him I confided to Des-
camps that I did not like his looks and his strange
colour. He was not jet black ; he was more nut-
brown than positively black.
In the first round I realized that I was engaged
in a hopeless tussle, for the little black man was a
45
My Fighting Life
freak. It hurt me to surrender to him, but for once
I listened to Descamps and gave up.
The subsequent history of Dixie Kid all those
acquainted with the ring know. Deported from Eng-
land, the last time I heard of him was that he was
earning a precarious living in Spain.
CHAPTER IV
I BOX IN ENGLAND
I WAS still at Trouville when I received an invitation
from Mr. James White, the .well-known English
financier, to come to London. It gave me much
delight, and I accepted it at once. As in my very
early days, I longed for and dreamed of the time
when I would appear in Paris, so now I craved for
an opportunity to go to England.
At the time Jack Johnson had recently arrived
from America, after having beaten a shell of the real
Jeffries, and Mr. White, then unknown to the box-
ing public, conceived the idea of matching Bom-
bardier Wells against him. As a matter of fact,
articles were signed ; Olympia had been secured ; and
Johnson, now a heavily bejewelled, posturing person,
with a craze for fast-running motor-cars, and accom-
panied by a beautiful white woman, wrhose diamond
necklace formed the object of much comment in the
newspapers, had received a very substantial sum of
money on account. It is familiar history that Wells
and Johnson did not fight. The contest was roundly
condemned. Wells, Johnson and Mr. White were
47
My Fighting Life
called before the magistrate at Bow Street, on a
charge of doing something likely to commit a breach
of the peace, and they were bound over.
I do not know the full and intimate story of why
Johnson and Wells were not allowed to fight—
(Johnson, taking a leaf out of the book of Tommy
Burns, made it a condition that he would be paid
£6,000, " win, lose, or draw ")— but the fact is that
it was effectively stopped. But before it was vetoed
I had come to London, and on many days did I spar
before the public with Wells.
I was but a light-weight then, and a boy ; but
from the first moment I put the gloves on with the
Bombardier, I felt instinctively that it would be
directly through him that I would realize my
ambition. I was growing fast, and already both
Descamps and myself knew that the time was
quickly approaching when I would be obliged to go
into a heavier division. Wells was then the British
Heavy-weight Champion, and I will tell him now that
the many bouts of sparring I had with him not only
improved my boxing, but convinced me that should
I become reasonably big enough, I would find a way
to beat him.
A beautiful, delightful boxer is Wells, but it was
forced upon me during his training for the match
with Johnson that he did not have that confidence
48
I Box in England
which is necessary before a man can hope to
touch greatness. But about the talents, the fail-
ings and tragedy of Bombardier Wells I will tell
later.
Much distressed and a heavy loser though Mr.
White was by reason of the abandonment of the
Wells — Johnson fight, he nevertheless, in a way
characteristic, decided to have boxing at Olympia,
and as my opponent he found Sid Burns, a London
Hebrew. Let me say that this Burns was the
cleverest English boxer I had met, and I count my
fight with him among my greatest. He was fast,
clever, resourceful and determined, and had I not
excelled myself I could never have won. Oh, how
happy I was when the referee said that the fight was
mine!
My victory was most generously applauded, and
from that day to this I have known only great and
unfailing kindness in England. It was on October 2
ftiat I defeated Burns; twenty days later I fought
Young Joseph, then the British Light-weight Cham-
pion, at King's Hall, London. At the end of ten
rounds, so severely had I punished Joseph that his
seconds gave up for him.
Having disposed of England's light-weight cham-
pion, Descamps decided that I should have a " fight-
ing holiday." "You have been groaning under
E 49
My Fighting Life
hard, unceasing work," he declared. " Now for easy
money by plucking what the English call ' lemons.' "
So we went from Lens to Lille, and' I was put up
against a Frenchman named Lacroix. I knocked
him out in nine rounds, as I also did Theo. Gray,
whom I shortly afterwards met at Boulogne.
CHAPTER V
MY FIGHTS WITH LEDOUX, LEWIS, SULLIVAN AND
OTHERS
BEFORE I tell you of my battle with Harry Lewis,
the American, who had an unbelievably hard jaw,
I would go back to 1909, the year previous to my
engagement with Young Warner. In the record of
my fights, compiled and published by the news-
papers, it is not stated that in 1909 I met and beat
Charles Ledoux, in my opinion one of the greatest
bantams ever known.
This is the pen-picture which I would draw of
Ledoux : Dot of a man, his cheeks are tanned by
the sun, he bespeaks health. See him on the boule-
vards, dressed quietly but immaculately, and you
would laugh at the idea that he is one of the hardest,
the most vicious fighters in the world. He has no
unusual reach — he is just a plain, everyday little
fellow. In either hand he carries a knock-out blow.
It is often said that he is no boxer — which is not a
fact. He can and does box cleverly, but you forget
that he is a boxer because he does his boxing
differently from any other man.
51
My Fighting Life
When I met Ledoux, who is two years older
than myself, he was king of all the bantams in
France. A pastrycook when not fighting, he had
gone here and there beating opponents in such a
masterly and sensational fashion that I, like the rest
of my countrymen, marvelled. It was only after
much cogitation and not a little fear and trepidation
that I determined to fight him.
We appeared at the Tivoli Boxing Hall, Paris,
in October, 1909. I can see Ledoux in the ring
now. There was no smile on his face as he sat in
his corner ; he was stern and tense ; his thin lips were
pressed tightly together. The bell went, and at one
bound Ledoux was in the centre of the ring. Every-
body knew Ledoux ; he was everybody's favourite,
and people rubbed their hands in high expectation
of seeing me, a tall, rush-like lad, beaten quickly.
I imagined they were murmuring, " Who is this
child from Lens who dares to tread on the tails of
the coat of Charles Ledoux ? It is an apache against
a baby who scarce has been weaned."
In a twinkling Ledoux got to grips with me.
A right and left set my body quivering and shaking.
Ping, bang, crash ! Now a terrible straight punch,
again a blow from an impossible angle. And en
passant, I would remark that a greater in-fighter than
Ledoux I have not yet seen. So thoroughly, so
52
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
scientifically, so effectively does he do it, that he
might have been reared and taught in the premier
American school of in-fighters.
It was a dreadful, heart-breaking first round for
me. At the end of it black specks danced before
my eyes, I ached cruelly in the region of the breast-
bone, my ribs smarted and were sore, and, as Des-
camps splashed me with scented water and rubbed
and nursed me and whispered soothing words in my
ears, I shook off — I do not know how — the appre-
hension that had seized nre. I determined to let
Ledoux fight, and I would box. And I hugged hard
to my determination.
There was a common impression that the contest
would be over in the second round ; in the third at
the latest. As in the opening round, so in the
second Ledoux flew at me. I side-stepped, Ledoux
missed me and beat the air. A thousand voices
roared, " Bravo, Carpentier! '
Ledoux had gone nearly through the ropes. The
next instant, however, he was chasing after me. He
did not trouble about a guard. It was enough for
him to swing his arms, to come for me with eyes of
raging fire, his hard, bullet-like head bent slightly
forward.
I darted here, I skipped there. My body I would
bend so that it was like so much indiarubber. Now
53
My Fighting Lite
I was making Ledoux miss by yards ; now, so it was
written, I was performing boxing miracles, and
wonderful things I did with my left hand. I kept
it straight, and in and out it would go, like the
tongue of a serpent. And the head of Ledoux would
be for ever going back with a snap. The fact that
he had not already reduced me to pulp filled those
who looked on with amazement.
When ten rounds had gone I held a substantial
lead, and I felt certain that I would win. And
foolishly I fell to dreaming of what my triumph over
Ledoux would mean. I was brought back to realities
by Ledoux still tearing after me, working me in a
corner and raining such blows upon me that my body
came near to breaking into pieces. And I was
almost beaten. I awoke from my dream to find
Descamps almost distracted, and to hear
"Ledoux!" being shouted. A great and happy
relief it was when the end of this round came. But
there were five more rounds to go. I felt sick, and
there were many ugly marks on my body telling of
punishment. Descamps so capered that I knew he
feared I would lose. But though I was pained and
doubted whether I would be able to survive, I had
my wits. I could still think and see straight. I was
much encouraged by the certain knowledge that I
was well ahead on points, but in each of the remain-
54
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
ing five rounds I was terribly punished. Now and
then I would reel like a drunken man ; once my legs
crossed and I nearly fell headlong on to my face.
I was very bad.
Then the brute that is in me, as it is in all men,
spoke : "Charles Ledoux," it said, "if it is killing
you would have, so, too, will I kill."
And determined that only death would cause me
to yield. Those last five rounds I shall never forget,
and I am sure they live in the memory of Ledoux
for all time. One second he would send me totter-
ing— the next I caused him to be like a man trying
to clutch shadows.
"Ledoux wins!' everybody shouted. And
then, as I rocked and rolled and shivered, and yet
still held up, I could hear " Carpentier ! Carpentier !
Carpentier ! ' Again it was " Ledoux ! Ledoux ! '
When the last round was begun a great crowd
was standing and shouting and howling. The odds
were that Ledoux would knock me out, but he failed
to pin me to the ropes, though he tried with all his
might to do so. And then at last — how long did it
seem to be coming ! — the bell sounded and I fell
into the arms of Descamps. I had won. And for
this terrible fight I received only a few francs. Yet
how happy was I !
After I had knocked out Theo. Gray at
55
My Fighting Life
Boulogne in 1911 I slackened off in training.
Staleness had seized hold of me completely, and I
developed a mood when I did not want to even look
at a boxing-glove again. It was agreed that I had
well earned a holiday, and besides, it was not so
imperative now to gather in every possible franc.
Much money ,was coming to me. My wants were
few, and there was a considerable margin to lay at
one side. I had been leading a life of leisure for a
whole month when Harry Lewis, who had frequently
visited Europe, arrived in France and sought a
match.
This Lewis had the reputation of having a jaw
that was positively impervious to punishment, and
not only so, but his head was as hard as flint. A
shrewd, calculating Hebrew he was, and quite a like-
able fellow. All his affairs were managed by his wife.
She it was who made his matches for him; she it
was who arranged terms and collected all purses, for,
she declared, "Harry has got just to fight. That's
his work."
Lewis was a model husband. He was the soul of
obedience, and I do believe that he feared to go
contrary to the wishes of his wife ; indeed, he seemed
to take a delight in his complete subservience to her.
About this time Lewis was at his very best, and as
a welter few men could have beaten him. Many
56
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
times he had appeared in London and beaten the best
that could be put up against him. I am afraid I all
too unconsciously courted trouble when I agreed to
meet him in a twenty-round contest, for, quite apart
from the fact that Lewis stood high in his profession
and, so far as I can remember, he had never been
knocked out, I was out of shape and was none too
well. Besides, my holiday had caused me to put on
much weight, and I left myself only a couple of weeks
in which to get down to the poundage at which it wras
agreed we were to fight.
It was on the thirteenth day of December that I
met Lewis, and my experience was such that I de-
cided that thirteen was a most unlucky number. The
contest went to the full twenty rounds, and at the
finish it was held that I had won. I will make this
confession quite freely and readily : in few fights have
I come so near to being beaten as in that with
Lewis.
A better and cleverer boxer I think I proved my-
self to be, but I was not nearly so strong as Lewis,
and I was thankful when it was all over. Lewis was
bitterly disappointed at the verdict. Personally, I
think I just won, but that was about all. Lewis has
been out of the game for many years now ; only a few
fights did he have after our meeting. His fighting
career was brought to an end in a sad and tragic way.
57
My Fighting Life
He was so shaken and bruised in a taxi-cab accident
in London that he became a wreck of a man.
I was severely lectured by Descamps about the
necessity of always taking the ring in perfect con-
dition, and I agreed that it was madness to run any
further risks. I blush to say that I sadly under-rated
Harry Lewis, and the wonder was that I managed
to pull through against him.
At the beginning of 1912 M. Robert Coquelle,
in the days of his youth a prominent cyclist in France,
approached Descamps on behalf of M. Camille Blanc
and other distinguished sportsmen, with a suggestion
that, providing a match could be made with Jim
Sullivan, who was then the British middle-weight
champion, they would stage it at Monte Carlo in the
following February. The purse offered was in the
neighbourhood of £1,000, which, so far as I am con-
cerned, was a record one.
With Descamps I came to London, saw Sullivan
and his manager, and articles were signed. All went
swimmingly until less than half an hour before it was
time for us to get into the ring. Then in my dress-
ing-room there happened a scene which threatened
to bring about the abandonment of the match.
The manager of Sullivan set out to quibble about
things which I did not think really mattered, and
Descamps, not grasping the meaning of it all, raved
58
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
and roared and stamped and jumped and threatened.
It was quite expected that there would be a pretty
little fight between the two managers, but I knew
different. Descamps engaged in nothing more seri-
ous than an extravagant pantomime, done, I suspect,
to upset the English party. For my own part, I took
no notice of the row, and I am sure that Mr. Harry
Williams, who was looking after the affairs of Sulli-
van, could not make me out at all. As I expected
from its beginning, the quarrel developed into
nothing more terrible than the spluttering of a great
many words, and to the accompaniment of music we
took the ring.
The stage was pitched in the open, and I question
whether any two fighters have appeared before such a
fashionable gathering. I do not suppose that more
than a small percentage of those who took up seats
knew anything about boxing. They accepted it as
part of the everyday life on the Riviera. But there
was one man there who will surely take a place among
the most interesting pugilists of the jvorld. His
name is Kid McCoy.
In France and on the Continent generally endless
introductions of celebrities are deemed to be insepar-
able from a boxing match, and I was getting fidgety
and not a little bored because of the stream of people
.who came up for presentation when Kid McCoy, who
59
My Fighting Life
had come with Tod Sloan, the famous American
jockey, to see the fight, climbed into the ring.
A more striking man I had never seen. Until
his name was announced I had not the remotest idea
that this man was the world-renowned Kid McCoy,
otherwise Norman Selby. Tall — his tanned face so
chiselled as to be a classical face ; hair curly ; figure
superb ; dress immaculate — this was McCoy as I saw
him on that afternoon at Monte Carlo. Doffing his
high, glossy hat, and bowing like the born courtier,
he announced in a carefully phrased speech that
whoever proved to be the winner he was prepared
to meet him.
I Lwon, but McCoy, though anxious to fight me,
was prevented by illness from doing so. But I had
the privilege of seeing him in action shortly after my
victory over Sullivan, when he met George Gunther,
a negro, I believe, and by a perfect exhibition of
scientific boxing he won. I have seen few prettier
or more effective boxers than McCoy, though when
I saw him his big days were over.
Jim Sullivan is in many respects very much like
Bombardier Wells. He has a "temperament."
Before the signal was given for a start to be made,
it twas plain for me to see that he was suffering much
apprehension. He tugged and pulled at his gloves,
and that he did not hear those who were after shaping
60
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
the fight for him, I am sure. Only did he stare
blankly at me. I took in the situation at a glance,
and when the band struck up the " Marseillaise," I
did a little shadow boxing and tried to convey to
Sullivan that I was certain to beat him.
I got right into the inside of his mind ; it was a
mind all disturbed. There was no order in it.
When we shook hands I knew he was frightfully
nervous; that instead of concentrating on his busi-
ness, he was wool-gathering. He seemed to see in
me that which was not. He was bewildered by my
feigned indifference, and I have rarely won a fight
so easily. We had scarce faced each other when I
broke right through his guard with my left hand, and
shook him from head to foot.
Then I was positive that I would win quickly.
The feet of Sullivan appeared to be glued to the floor
of the ring ; his arms were stiff, and it was hard for
him to wTork them, and at the end of the first round
he cut a very sorry figure as he sat in his corner.
Midway in the second round I feinted with my left
hand, and brought the right crashing to the chin, and
by it I lifted Sullivan clean off his feet so that he fell
backwards, his head thumping the floor.
It was some little time before he could be brought
round, and I was anxious for his condition. But
Sullivan suffered no ill-effects, and when I saw him
61
My Fighting Life
during a recent visit to London he was the picture
of health. I number Sullivan among the most unfor-
tunate boxers. There is not the slightest doubt that
he had considerable ability, but he did not have the
fighting brain. I judged him to be a hyper-sensitive
man, and the hyper-sensitive man has no business in
the fighting-pit.
It was at Monte Carlo that I became first
acquainted with hero-worship in an acute form. The
moment Sullivan had been counted out, I was seized
and hugged and kissed and carried shoulder-high, and
when I at last managed to reach my hotel I found my
room filled with flowers. And I fell asleep with
violets banked up round my pillow.
In the evening I was entertained to dinner by
M. Blanc and other notable sportsmen. Such a
banquet I have never been to since. It was all won-
derful, and how sad I was that Sullivan did not come
to it, as he was invited to do. Had he been present
he would have left the banqueting hall richer by many
thousands of francs, for it was the intention of the
good people ,who entertained me to " pass round the
hat."
I stayed for some little time on the Riviera after
my affair with Jim Sullivan, and I did not have
another fight until the first week of the following
April. That jvas against George Gunther, a negro,
62
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
not unknown to boxing enthusiasts in England. We
met in Paris, and the contest went the full distance —
20 rounds — at the end of which I was the winner on
points.
Hubert Roc, the French heavy-weight, was my
next opponent, and at Marseilles I knocked him out
in six rounds.
Twelve days later I beat Willie Lewis, the famous
American, who did so much to spread a love for box-
ing in France, in 20 rounds in Paris, and almost a
month later I was matched against Frank Klaus, the
fight taking place at Dieppe, where on the same day
Charles Ledoux beat the late Digger Stanley.
My fight was on the occasion of the big Auto-
mobile Grand Prix Race. Klaus was known as the
" Pittsburg Bear Cat," and was a middle-weight. I
was a little beyond that poundage, but I agreed to get
down to it. And I succeeded — but how I suffered in
my effort to do so ! It was madness, but such was
the success I had won that I foolishly supposed that
I could not be beaten.
And now upon reflection, the wonder is that I
ever put a glove on again. For Klaus was terrible.
He looked what he was — a fighter by nature, by
choice. There was no softness in his make-up.
From his hips to his shoulders he had a truly gigantic
frame. His jaw was the squarest and the hardest I
63
My Fighting Life
ever punched. The power he had in his shoulders
was extraordinary ; his chest was tremendously deep
and was thickly covered with hair. His legs tapered
beautifully, and his reach was unusually long. His
face was like granite that had had bits chipped out
of it. Altogether a fearsome-looking fellow was
Klaus.
" You have been well nicknamed," said I to
myself when we stood up to begin. No sooner had
I put my hands up than I knew that I was im-
measurably better as a boxer. He did not employ
his left hand as I did, neither had he such a turn of
speed as I possessed ; and I very quickly caused him
to beat the air. But it did not take me more than a
few minutes to know that Klaus was a super-man.
Ping ! would go my left hand ; slash ! and rip ! would
go my right, but my blows were as so much water
on a duck's back. Klaus did not even blink.
No man was ever harder than he was ; it broke
my heart to realize, as I did, that he could not be
hurt. His condition was magnificent ; his determina-
tion stupendous. And all he wanted, all he sought,
was to get to close quarters, and then, no matter
how I slashed and cut and stabbed, to reach my body.
" I do not pretend to box ; I am not clever, but,
my boy, if I can only get close to you I will make
your ribs cave in," he seemed to say.
64
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
And on this day Frank Klaus was a king among
in-fighters.
" Hit me where and how you like, break my jaw,
if you can, I don't mind," I supposed he was
muttering. " I will get you yet."
I was making points in abundance, and yet as
round succeeded round I saw that Klaus was none
the worse. Often did I hit him where and how I
pleased, and why it was that I did not knock him
out at half the distance I shall never be able to know
or tell. I hit him hard enough to kill him, and then
by sheer, unbelievable strength and an indifference
to punishment that was positively uncanny, he forced
himself to close quarters.
Then he punished me terribly. There was no
mercy in his soul. Only my determination to keep
on my feet helped me to continue. Bang ! he would
come at my stomach, and crash ! into my ribs.
Klaus appeared to take a roguish delight in prov-
ing that I could not hurt him, and that as an in-
fighter he was a demon.
Klaus was a demon !
My strength was fast giving out, as a boy's will
when he is up against a full-grown giant of a man,
but, although my legs threatened to break, I hung
on. There was but another round to go, for we had
begun the 19th. My condition was shocking. I was
F 65
My Fighting Life
battered and bruised all over, but my head was clear ;
I could still think straight ; my wits were not twisted,
and I was sure that if my strength would only hold
out I would win on points. I ,was now bleeding
freely from the mouth, and somewhere about the
middle of the round Klaus hit me in the pit of the
stomach with all the power and viciousness in him.
The blow caused blood to gush from my mouth, and
at the sight of it Descamps, overwrought and mad
with excitement, jumped into the ring and seized
my body.
And as I felt his arms around me, squeezing and
pressing me to him as would a man possessed, I
became frantic.
" What do you do ? Go away, Frangois ! Let me
go! What do you mean? Madman! " I cried.
Pandemonium reigned. The din, the noise, the
wild shouts — how awful it all was ! I screamed ; I
tried to break loose. But no! Descamps had the
strength of a regiment of men. He wrestled me to
my corner. Great tears rolled down his face, which
was now all twitching.
"Georges, my Georges! I will not have you
killed," he cried.
And because Descamps jumped into the ring I
.was disqualified. The fight went to Klaus.
In my hot blood I vowed that I would never speak
66
FRANCOIS DESGAMPS
(Carpentier's Manager)
My Fights with Ledoux and Others
to Descamps again. I would not be quieted. Oh,
the tragedy of it all ! But on the night of this day,
when hotness had passed and Descamps was sick unto
death because of what had happened, I freely forgave
the little, intensely emotional man.
"But why did you stop the fight when I was
.winning? " I questioned.
"My good Georges," he replied, "when Klaus
hit you in the stomach and blood splashed from your
mouth, I thought something had snapped in your
inside. And I being your father, I who have nursed
you and reared you, would not lose my little boy.
No ! I was frightened for you — forgive me, Georges.
It was my love for you that made me do what I did."
I could but embrace my dear Francois.
CHAPTER VI
I MEET THE ILLINOIS THUNDERBOLT
DESCAMPS would not listen to my fighting again from
this day of June at Dieppe until the following
October, when Billy Papke, who claimed to be the
middle-weight champion of the world, so twitted me
about my surrender to Klaus that I insisted upon
meeting him. Descamps did not like the match at
all ; he was strongly averse to my getting down to
the middle-weight limit, but I told him that which
he did not know. After my fight with Klaus, I saw
the two judges, Rene de Knyff and Maurice Bern-
hardt, son of the adorable Sarah. They assured me
that had not Descamps interfered, I should, had I
lasted through the twentieth round, been declared
the winner on points. They, like the referee, Pro-
fessor Mones, who was killed in the war, were certain
that I held quite a substantial lead when Francois,
scared out of his senses when he saw blood trickle
from my mouth, jumped into the ring and so caused
me to be disqualified.
" And now, Francois," I said, " it was not Klaus
that beat me ; and, besides, even if I have to force
68
I Meet the Illinois Thunderbolt
myself to get down to the weight so as to satisfy
Papke, that I did in order to meet Klaus, and Papke
can never be a greater fighter than Klaus."
This and other arguments caused Descamps to
consent to my fighting Papke, known, by the way,
as the " Illinois Thunderbolt."
I was then eighteen years and five months old.
Papke, perhaps without meaning, was very pre-
tentious and bumptious, but away from the ring and
when there was no talk of fighting, he was entirely
happy when he was nursing and dangling and cooing
to his little child. He was two men — one who would
have you suppose that he was very fierce ; the other,
when in the company of his wife and child, a model
of docility. He had a round, chubby face, and had
quite a stock of humour of a kind. When I let it
be known that I would fight him, he was " just tickled
to death at this French kid," and asked " if he cannot
beat Frank Klaus how can he hope to live against
me?"
The match was quickly made, and we took the
ring at the Cirque de Paris on October 23, 1912.
The crowd was a record one, the receipts amounting
to 110,000 francs. Everybody was there. When I
appeared I was almost frightened by the reception
given to me; there was no restraint in it. Ladies
stood up, waved their handkerchiefs and blew kisses
69
My Fighting Life
to me. Papke chewed gum furiously and smiled
cynically, suggesting by his manner that I >would pay
very dearly for my impudence in daring to meet him.
It was once said that Jack Johnson was a past
master of ring slang of a tantalizing kind, but at his
best and in his most offensive, impossible mood, he
could not have beaten Papke. His scorn of me, the
unmitigated contempt he showed was cruel in the
extreme. He curled his lips in a way calculated to
wither any normal man, and the language he used was
strange and peculiar.
I did not know much else than French then, but
I had sufficient knowledge to gather that he was not
quite sure how much of a frog and how much of a
man was in me. I was a "guy," a "boob," a
" stiff," everything but Georges Carpentier, and he
had with him seconds who counted the use of slang
as a rare accomplishment.
Before a blow was struck, Papke, still working
his jaw at express speed, guessed : " They'll bury you
to-morrow — nice boy, sorry for you, kid — ordered
your funeral? ':
I was reduced to a state of mind by his taunts
that I felt as I had never felt before or since. I felt
as if I was on fire. The temper in me brought red
into my eyes. So I rushed and hit him with a left
upper-cut to the body.
70
I Meet the Illinois Thunderbolt
"Oh, my! " he cried, "trying to hurt me, are
you ? Try again ! What a wallop ! How's that ? ' ;
as he banged into me.
A wicked Papke was he on this night ; with him,
everything was permissible. He was out to slaughter
me ; by his very ways, the viciousness he put behind
every blow, his cynical, sardonic humour, the mock
sympathy he showed to me, his absolute and con-
temptuous disregard for playing the game, filled me
with rage, so that in the first round I could do
nothing.
When I went to my corner Descamps, in an ex-
cited but splendidly fatherly .way, enlarged upon the
unwisdom of losing tempers, but it was only after
a supreme effort that I was able to curb the devil
that was in me.
Then I knew that if I did what Papke was after
getting me to do — to fight as men will do on the
stones and when there is a common recognition of an
" all-in " policy, I should suffer and even quickly lose.
So I decided to box.
It is on record that I was soon far ahead on points.
With my left hand, especially, I did much good
work; I rarely missed when I struck with it, but
though I jabbed and upper-cut him and in many ways
out-generalled him, I could not beat him. He did
not play the game. When he held my arms, he
71
My Fighting Life
pinched the muscles ; he would also get my arm
locked and punch me with all his might, and all the
time he made full use of his biting, vitriolic tongue.
It. was then that I put on one side my early
resolve ; instead of boxing and making every use of
my speed, I threw caution to the winds and set out
to fight. I forgot completely how to play for
safety. Papke, as we were at close quarters, would
say, " Come on, you stiff! Get right up close and
see what will happen. They will carry you out of
the ring." And foolishly I did what he jeeringly
invited me to do. I do not think I ever suffered to
have my body so punished. Already weakened by
my effort to get down to the agreed weight, I had
had a Turkish bath before I went to the scales, and
even then had the utmost difficulty in doing the
stipulated poundage.
The right of Papke's, with which he would
describe a most unusual upper-cut, was awful. This
was his principal weapon, and it ,was one that played
havoc. We leaned and held and he punched in
holds, but still I knew I was leading by ever so
many points. But what began to get on my mind
was the fact that the harder I hit the American
the more impervious to punishment did he appear
to be.
There was not a single round that was not
72
I Meet the Illinois Thunderbolt
chockful of excitement. First, I would come near
to knocking him up ; then he would upper-cut me
with his murderous right, and turn me green with
sickness. The strength of Papke was wonderful,
inexhaustible, and on this night I am sure that he
hit harder than any middle-weight who ever took
the ring.
He would take a punch on the jaw and laugh in
a freakish way, and, leering all the time, would
wait for an opportunity to send his right ripping
upwards.
In the twelfth round I was in sore distress, all
,wobbly at the knees, but I never thought of giving
up. Papke, a particularly cute man, took in my
condition at once, and hissed : " Now, you boob,
guess you have got to go through the hoop."
In the sixteenth round, when my head was
buzzing and strange, ghostly noises came into my
ears, and there was scarce any strength in my legs,
I took three short counts, and when I scrambled
back to my corner Descamps implored me to
retire.
And he had the onlookers with him to a man.
I was truly in a bad way. Papke had now got me
in the hollow of his hand, and he chuckled
accordingly.
There is nothing so heartrending as when,
73
My Fighting Life
possessed of all your senses, you know that you
have not the physical power to continue; a man,
conscious of his strength, and yet deplorably weak,
is a distressing spectacle. Such a man was I.
Before I took the ring against Papke I had a
long and earnest talk with Descamps, to whom I
made the darkest threats if he were to do what he
did at Dieppe, when he stopped my fight against
Klaus. And when the sixteenth round had come to
a close, and he begged me to throw up the sponge,
I glared at him in such a way, I fear, that he wished
he had never spoken. But I knew that I was a
beaten man.
I knew what to do, but I could not do it ; I was
sick and weary and broken. So came Papke 's grand
opportunity, and he pummelled me without any
mercy.
When I was almost falling, and it was not
possible for me to raise a hand to protect myself, I
nodded to the anxious, tearful Descamps, who with
a shout of delight stopped the fight.
When I was able to do so, I walked across the
ring to shake Papke by the hand. There was, I
thought, no cordiality in his shake; only pity, I
suspected ; pity that I had had the brazenness to
venture against him — Billy Papke, the " Illinois
Thunderbolt," .who had wandered from his home
74
I Meet the Illinois Thunderbolt
for the purpose of making a caricature of " Georges
Carpentier, the best boxer in all France."
For some time Papke remained in Paris, .with
Frank Klaus always hard upon his heels. For .weeks
a war of queer words was waged, and then they were
matched to fight. I took myself to the contest, and
it was the nearest thing to attempted murder I ever
knew or shall know. It was a fight in jvhich there
was intense hatred and not a spark of chivalry. It
was not nice to look upon. Each man fought with-
out a guard; it was enough to hit one another and
to take an unholy delight in hurting. It was a fight
to a finish, and then Papke was the winner.
What it took out of them I cannot tell, but it
is a fact that thereafter both Papke and Klaus did
little good. Their affair in Paris must have eaten
up all their vitality. It was brutal.
At the time I felt the indignity of my defeat
by Papke more than I can say. I wanted to hide
my head, for I knew that I had been reckless and
absurdly venturesome. I should have known that it
was next to impossible for me to come within the
middle-weight limit, and I feared that I had done
myself much harm. It was only Descamps by his
whole-hearted sympathy that helped me to forget
and to remember that fighting for one's living means
a life of ups and downs.
75
My Fighting Life
" There is such a thing," he declared, " as honour
in defeat. It is true that Papke sought to kill you ;
he nearly killed you, but both he and Klaus taught
you much that you did not know about in-fighting,
and the day will come when you will say that the
hiding these men gave you helped you to become
champion of the world."
Philosophy and Descamps are synonymous terms.
He certainly made me a philosopher; he it is who
has taught me not to worry as to what might happen
in any fight, and it came about that I emerged from
a particularly vicious attack of doldrums and forgot
all about the thrashing I received from Papke.
" We will for a time," said Descamps, in his
little, modest rooms in Lens, " forget about Papke,
Klaus, and everybody else. There has come one
Marcel Moreau, our countryman, a clever, brave
fellow. You shall fight him, and if you win you will
get back in the hearts of everybody."
So I came to meet Moreau in Paris on January 8,
1913. Chastened I was then, and with a better and
truer perspective. I saw things as they really were.
I pictured myself the sky-rocket of the ring ; up I
had gone, and then — how terrible ! I had cojne
down with a flop. The days when we did the
rounds of the countryside estaminets, the doubts we
had whether we would have given to us enough
76
I Meet the Illinois Thunderbolt
money to buy a lunch, the hard, unceasing grind so
that we might live, the wonderings whether I had
not built a bridge of fancies — these and other things
did I wrestle with, and I decided that if I could only
beat Moreau all would be well.
Fighting is like all other professions. You have
your lean days, and there come days of immense
prosperity; again, disenchantment, and then the
pendulum will swing the other way, and you live in
days of brightness.
I often wonder when I hear the public roaring
its welcome to me whether they realize my days and
nights of utter anguish ; whether they realize that a
pugilist has his moments of almost blank despair!
And this I wondered when I set out to train for
my contest with Marcel Moreau. This young man
had every reason to suppose that at his weight — he
was almost a light heavy — he would reach the top
of the tree ; he was at this time my greatest rival.
How I did train so that I could be completely
prepared. I did reach almost perfect physical fit-
ness, and, better, I discovered tranquillity of mind. /
I hold that no boxer who does not know mental
happiness can ever hope to win unusual success.
.;
Mind must triumph over matter.
There was a great and distinguished crowd to
witness my bout with Moreau. Rumour had it that
77
My Fighting Life
my contests with Klaus and Papke had sapped my
strength; at least, that they had robbed me of the
"sacred flame" — a liking, a love for fighting. It
happened that, much to the surprise of the experts,
I fought as if I had never known defeat, that the
superior weight of Moreau mattered little, and in
the eighth round, so punished had my opponent been,
that the fight was stopped.
We are great friends, Moreau and myself, and
he has since told me that I won because I was
unnatural; that I fought like an old man of the
ring, and not as a boy, and that every punch I
landed told an eloquent story of the art of scientific
hitting. I am happy to confess that my defeat of
Moreau gave me the greatest possible pleasure ; it
gave me a new lease of life, and when it was over
I was so happy that I asked Descamps to get as many
matches as possible.
So he busied himself in London, and there came
to Paris to meet me Bandsman Rice. I knocked
him out in the second round ; and then came a call
from the Riviera, George Gunther, the negro whom
I had outpointed at the end of twenty rounds in
Paris in April, 1912, having pleaded for a second
match, was put up against me at Nice. I beat him
in fifteen rounds.
CHAPTER VII
MY FIGHTS WITH WELLS — AND A SEQUEL
ABOUT this time I was in such splendid shape and
>was feeling so well and growing so quickly that
Descamps, with much preamble, I would have it
known, came to me and said : " Georges, there is
the big bombardier, Billy Wells. Once at Leigh-
on-Sea, when you were training, and after a spar
with him in which he used you rather roughly, you
said, ' Wait until I am a little bigger, and then I
will fight him.' Well, there is to be an exhibition
at Ghent, and people have come to me and asked
me whether you will meet him. Remember that he
is more than six feet tall, that he has a reach from
here to there, that he is nearly three stones heavier,
that he is the champion heavy-weight of Great
Britain. What say you? '
I recollected that as a very small boy at Earl's
Court I had sparred with him when he was training
for a fight with Jack Johnson, and I was preparing
to meet Sid Burns ; that, rightly or wrongly, I had
got the notion that it was easy to find his body ; that
he was a highly sensitive man ; that if I could only
79
My Fighting Lite
beat him, the best big man in England, my way
to fame and fortune would be all the easier. So I
said to Descamps :
"Make the match at once; and I shall win it.
But if I am beaten — what would I lose? Nothing.
I will have the gamble of my life. It will be
worth it."
So the match was made. I was then not more
than eleven stone and a half, and I should say that
Wells was approaching, if he did not actually exceed,
thirteen stone. I have a cutting from one of the
London newspapers which riddled holes in the idea
of my taking on Wells, and between the lines there
was the suggestion, plain for everybody to see, that
I was about to become a party to a " fake."
I would tell the writer this : far from the fight
being a " fake," I entered into it because of the
experience I had gained in daily sparring with
Wells. To me, to Descamps, the big, delightful
Bombardier had severe limitations; I knew, at least
I felt, that if I could but get to grips with him I
would knock him out.
Further, both Papke and Klaus had taught me
much about in-fighting, a phase of the game at which
you who know your boxing will admit Wells does
not excel.
However, the match took place in the grounds
80
My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
of the Brussels Exhibition on Sunday, June 1, 1913.
It was staged in what was a half-completed floral
hall. The day was terribly wet. Still, a great crowd
came to it, among whom were hundreds of miners
from Lens; and when, as I appeared in the ring,
they roared their encouragement to me, I said to
Descamps, " Now or never." Men of Lens, you
helped me to happiness and success on that Sunday !
No sooner had we begun, however, than Wells
shot out his left hand that seemed miles long. I
strove to get inside of it, but the Bombardier,
standing bolt upright, a perfect boxer, held me at
bay. He was a giant ; by comparison I was a dwarf ;
it was David and Goliath all over again. And crash
came the right of the Bombardier, and down I
went, my knees almost breaking to pieces. I
sickened. I could feel my colour changing ; my
head was awhirl ; specks of black danced impishly
before my eyes. Yet I could see, I could hear, and
while I knelt and shook my head and did battle with
the muzziness that had come into my brain, I heard
the people as one man shout and hiss. They shouted
and hissed at Descamps.
"Assassin!" they yelled. "Stop it!" And
for a second or so I felt sure that they were right.
But at the count of nine I rose. " I will be killed
before I give in," I determined; but my legs had
G 81
My Fighting Life
lost their straightness ; they bent horribly, so that it
was as much as I could do to keep myself from
reeling all over the ring.
I was in no sort of condition to fight ; I was
helpless, hopeless, and why Wells did not walk up
to me and end the contest there and then I shall
never be able to understand. It was ridiculously
easy for him to have done so. There he was, to
me in my pitiful condition, as big as a mountain,
and yet he did not move towards me. His blue
eyes bulged ; he stood as a man transfixed. That
I, having been hit so hard, could scramble up
appeared to produce in him mental and physical
paralysis. Here he had me beaten to the world.
I was faint; I could not wonder; the strength to
even build a poor defence I had not ; only in a half-
blind way could I toddle up to him and lean on to
his huge frame. Had he side-stepped me and hit
me ever such a puny blow I should have been
defeated. But he did not do even an elementary
thing ; he obligingly held me up, and I survived
the first round.
" How do you feel? " inquired Descamps, whose
face was all trouble.
" He is too big and heavy for me. But I will
see how I go the next round. I will just hang on."
Round number two I spent nursing my sickened
82
My^Fights with^ Wells— and a Sequel
body. I kept close ; I confess that I leaned on. I
did not attempt one blow likely to take away what
little strength remained. My eyes still blurred;
my head ached ; I was only half able to know what
to do. I know that every man who looked on had
come to the conclusion that it was all over; not
one spectator in the big, half -finished building (not
even myself) thought otherwise when I entered upon
the second round. I learned afterwards that a well-
known member of the National Sporting Club, when
I was knocked down, had offered £1,000 to £3 on
Wells, and there was no taker.
It was then a million to one on the Bombardier.
And in the second round I suffered awful mental
agony. I went into it, knowing full well that I
was nearly all but beaten; only a miracle, I was
sure, could save me. Here was Wells, ever so
many inches taller than myself and at least a couple
of stone heavier, and whilst I was sore distressed
he had not been touched ! If ever a man had me
in his pocket that man was Wells.
However, I assumed a face of brass. I had seen,
while I was being tended and nursed and soothed
in my corner, that although Wells had practically
finished me, there was much nervousness in him.
There was a strange look in his eyes; he did not
appear to hear or understand a word whispered to
83
My Fighting Life
him by his chief second and manager, Jim Maloney.
And as I took stock of him it came upon me like
a flash that even Wells was wondering what the
end would be.
Had not this been forced on my mind I do
believe that I should have given up the ghost at
the end of the first round. When I had got through
the second and I had almost completely thrown off
the effects of the mighty punch I had received at
the very beginning of the contest, I had hopes that
I would pull through. Let me say that I shall
never be able to understand why Wells, with all
his physical advantages, did not insist on boxing
instead of allowing me to get inside. With his
tremendous left he could have held me off entirely,
and when I saw that he did not stretch himself
to his full and immense height, I rejoiced ex-
ceedingly. If he had only done the obvious
thing he would have polished me off, and it may
be that to-day he would have been champion of
champions.
Doubling himself up, and thereby standing little
higher than myself, and by refusing to make use
of his speed — there is no faster heavy-weight in all
the countries than Wells; there is certainly no
prettier or more stylish boxer — I was able to get
to grips and pound away at his stomach. After
84
My Fights with Wells—and a Sequel
every blow I delivered I felt him cringe. Then I
was positive that I had a chance.
"And how now, my good Georges?" asked
Descamps at the end of the second round.
" Tr&s bien, Francois," I answered gaily, and
the little man's eyes sparkled. He grinned and
chatted and hummed a tune in turn.
Half way through the third round I was abso-
lutely sure that, barring an accident, I would win,
for this is what happened :
As I left my corner I jumped at Wells. In a
second I was hammering at his body and I hurt
him. I could feel his frame rock; he half grunted.
He was buckling up. Descamps saw what was
happening, and when the gong told that the round
was over and I sat in my corner to have my limbs
massaged, he cried : " Go in for all you are worth
next time. If you do — finis! You have won."
I was now a new, an inspired man. I was
strong; I was filled with joy.
As in the third, so in the fourth round. I leapt
at the Bombardier, whose white skin had many
crimson patches splashed all over it. To attempt
to hit him anywhere but on his body would have
been fatal to my chances. To reach his chin seemed
impossible. So, making my body swing, and giving
to each blow all its weight, I drove left and right
85
My Fighting Life
to the neighbourhood of the waist line. Wells
shivered, and he did not attempt to return my
punches. He appeared to have been seized with
an amazing stiffness. I felt his legs tremble ; every
time I hit him I reduced his height. He was a
man seized with a cruel cramp.
And then at a signal from Descamps — the best
and surest reader of a fight I have ever known—
I upper-cut Wells just below the breast-bone ; his
guard dropped, and with a swinging right that
started from my hip I caught him full on the chin
and over he went.
He was counted out.
Before I had time to realize what had occurred,
I was shot up high on the shoulder of Descamps,
and the ring was filled with people. Everybody
howled. Such a scene of enthusiasm I had not
witnessed before. The great audience set up singing
the "Marseillaise." But my heart was heavy, and
a choking lump came into my throat as I looked
round and saw the golden, curly-haired Wells being
nursed back to consciousness by Maloney and his
young brother, Sidney.
I was glad to get away from it all. And as
quickly as possible I made for the big cafe close
by, and in the quiet of a little room I sipped tea
and ate a roll of buttered bread. Outside I heard
86
My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
a great crowd shouting and singing, so that I was
obliged to keep indoors. The manager of the cafe
came to me with many bouquets from ladies twho
had witnessed my sensational triumph, and hung
from them and hidden in them were messages all
sweetness and tenderness.
This victory of mine represented my greatest
accomplishment, but at least one English writer
kwould have it that he doubted the bona fides of the
fight, so that after I had knocked out the French
heavy-weight, Laurie, in three rounds at Bordeaux,
and later won a gruelling fight against Jeff Smith,
an American, in Paris at the end of twenty rounds,
I was glad to accept an invitation to come to London
and discuss with Mr. Bettinson, the manager of the
National Sporting Club, arrangements for a second
fight with the Bombardier.
Wells was delighted to have an opportunity of
proving that his defeat at Ghent was all wrong. For
my part, I desired to establish the genuineness of
the contest at the Brussels Exhibition. After
luncheon at the Savoy Hotel articles were signed,
and I took the ring at the famous club in Covent
Garden on Monday, Dec. 8, 1913.
Immediately the match was made I went into
training at Manitot, some seventy miles from Paris,
and when I came to London on the Saturday pre-
87
My Fighting Life
ceding the fight I was in the best possible shape.
In my preparation at Manitot both Descamps and
myself were certain that Wells, being such a highly-
strung man, was not likely to have forgotten his
downfall at Ghent. For kweeks before the contest
English critics were making much of the weakness
of the middle piece of Wells. They told him that
he was long waisted, and news came to us at Manitot
that Wells had been to special pains to harden his
abdominal muscles, for it was " certain that Car-
pentier will play for the body."
46 It is well they think so, Georges. But they
think wrong," declared Descamps. "It is good
though that the English writers should be so generous
in their advice to the big Bombardier. You will see
that he will range a guard for the special protection
of his body. That being so, you hit him on the
jaw, and it will be all over. It will be easy."
When I got into the ring the theatre was crowded
in every part. Many guineas were paid for the
privilege of standing. It was said that never had
the club been so crowded before. Lord Lonsdale
and many other distinguished people were present.
Mr. B. J. Angle was the referee, and M. Maitrot
and Mr. John Douglas were the judges. Lord
Lonsdale came to my corner to welcome me, and as
he shook me by the hand a great shout of cordiality
88
My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
was sent up. I am certain that nowhere in the
world is fighting done in such a splendid and decorous
way as it is at the National Sporting Club. This
night of December 8 was to me a marvellous ex-
perience. Had I been an Englishman I could not
have had a more enthusiastic welcome.
I was three and a half inches shorter than Wells,
and a stone and three pounds less in weight. The
bell went, "seconds out" was called, and I rushed
to the centre of the ring to exchange handshakes.
Wells came slowly and heavily towards me.
The packed house, which a moment before talked
and prattled, was now hushed into silence by the
signal for hostilities to begin.
When Wells ranged himself to fight he had his
elbows in a tangle ; as I expected, he was wholly
concerned about his body, but I saw clearly a road
to it, for the Bombardier, in his anxiety to cover
up his " vulnerable " spot, had an unnatural defence,
and I flew at him. In the first second, with right
and left, I hit him in the stomach. Wells had not
the faintest notion of what to do ; it was as if he
had become petrified. However, he managed some-
how to find my right eye, and he made it pink
coloured, but I brought my right over and cut him
on the bridge of the nose.
Wells was already in a bad way. There was no
89
My Fighting Life
light of intelligence in his eyes; they were glazed.
Many of my countrymen, overwrought, shrieked
"Carpentier! Carpentier! " And they could not
be quietened. And then, when but one minute
thirteen seconds had gone, I landed with left and
right to the side of his face. Wells trembled ; now
he had no guard at all. I hit him with left, right
and left again to the body and he went down.
A great "Oh! " was shouted as Wells rolled
over on to his back.
One, two, three, and on till ten did Mr. Zerega,
the timekeeper, count; but Wells made no attempt
to rise. And the fight ,was over.
I pinched myself so as to make sure that I had
won in an incredibly short period. For the first
time in my life I was really excited, excited even to
the point of breaking down. For a moment I forgot
the poor Bombardier, but when my eyes saw him
in his corner, his face wet with tears, I tore myself
away from Descamps and my seconds, and I rushed
to him and shook him by the hand. My face burned ;
I could not speak. All I could do was to smile
— inanely I am sure.
And around the ring Englishmen stood mute. A
contest for what was a record purse over in less than
half a round ! A great big Englishman beaten by
a boy!
90
My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
Wells was drenched with water; his ears were
pulled and twisted so that he came to. And then,
smiling pathetically, sickly, he stood up.
Jim Driscoll, rightly called " Incomparable Jim,"
had by now taken up a position at the foot of the
ring, and began to talk to Wells in an excited, jerky,
even a mad, way. What he said must have been
awful for Wells to hear. The Bombardier smiled
and said, "Don't, Jim," and then Lord Lonsdale
came and coaxed Driscoll away.
The old champion, in a piping voice, would not
have it that Wells had fought in a manner .worthy
of a Britisher, but Driscoll did not know what he
said. Then there was a cruel show of hostility
towards Wells. By this time he had got out of
the ring, and was making for his dressing-room. He
returned, and, as great big tears rolled down his sad
face, he bent under the ropes. With right hand
uplifted, he appealed to be heard, and when he had
brought something like quiet, he said in a voice all
cracked that he knew he had a weak spot ; that he
had done his best to protect it, and did not deserve
the show of anger against him.
" For," he concluded, " it was my one ambition
to beat this French boy." Poor Wells! He was
beaten before he got into the ring. It is recorded
that while taking his bandages off the Bombardier
9*
My Fighting Life
said, " I really cannot understand it. I cannot take
bodily punishment — that is evident. I was not
certain which course Carpentier would pursue, but
I thought that he would at once commence to mix
matters. How he got inside my guard the first time
I do not know. Afterwards I was totally at a loss
to defend myself. All I know is that his punches
hurt and that I could not stall them off."
Since that night I always regarded Wells as one
of the most pathetic figures in the ring. Charming,
graceful, softly spoken, a man with generous
instincts, a magnificent boxer — all this Wells is, but
he cannot fight. Physically he is built for the fighting
game ; temperamentally he is wholly unsuited for it.
He is perhaps the most uncertain champion ever
known ; few, if any, boxers have made such woeful
failures, and yet in point of popularity he is second
to none.
There was a sequel to my dramatic victory over
Wells — what I consider to be one of the most
romantic fights of my career. When the Bombardier
lay on the floor of the ring there was among the
astonished spectators a rare figure of a man, George
Mitchell, a member of an old and wealthy York-
shire family, who round about his home had won
much distinction as an amateur boxer.
To Mitchell the swift defeat of Wells was a
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My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
tragedy, a vicious blow at the boxing prestige of
England. Together with his friends he declared
that it was too awful that " this pale-faced French-
man should topple over the British champion by one
blow." They took themselves to their own par-
ticular club, and it was decided to wager £100 that
Mitchell would stand up longer against me than
Wells did.
A week or so later there came to Paris a little
band of Yorkshire sportsmen to hunt me up. First
they sought M. Victor Breyer, and to him they
made known the purpose of their mission. Their
sincerity, their complete honesty appealed to the
editor of the Echo des Sports, and at once he got
in touch with Descamps, who later put the propo-
sition before me.
The idea was this. They had bet £100 that
Mitchell would do better than Wells, and if I would
put the gloves on with him and try all I knew to
knock him out they would pay me £200. The
money did not concern me in the least degree; the
proposal was one which I embraced at once. And
they were delighted, and I could not help smiling at
Mitchell, who pleaded, " I want you to hit me as
hard as you possibly can. Please do not spare me
in the least. I want you to imagine that you are
up against Wells again. I should hate to win any
93
My Fighting Life
money if you treated me kindly, because it would
not be fair. I want to see whether I can go one
better than Wells. No larks, please."
I agreed, and a few days later a ring was pitched
in a room in the Latin Quartier. It belonged to
the Franco-Swiss Professor Lerda, a teacher of
physical culture, who was the referee. It was
decided that only one hundred specially invited
guests should look on, and they were sportsmen of
the best possible class.
I looked round for Mitchell, and when he
appeared, laughing like a great big boy out for a
holiday, he seemed to be ever so much taller than
in his ordinary clothes. Descamps looked upon
him for the first time, and when he had taken
full stock and had carefully noted his considerable
height and perfect condition, he gave a low whistle
— a whistle of apprehension.
And I wondered whether I had been rash.
Descamps most emphatically believed that I would
bump against trouble, and as I sat in my corner he
whispered, " Georges, you must really oblige this
splendid Englishman to the full. If you hit him
first, it will be all right; if he hits you first, then,
my son, it will be terrible."
Lerda ordered us to begin. As Mitchell stretched
himself to his full height a great shout went up, and
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My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
from all round the room came, " Now, George,
show them what Yorkshire can do."
I went for Mitchell at once — I was taking no
chances — and with my left hand I landed in the pit
of his stomach ; with my right I hammered his
head, and I expected he would fall with a bang.
Merely did Mitchell wobble and half reel. He
shifted and skipped round the ring, and I was after
him full tilt. I was annoyed that I had not knocked
him out with the first punch, for that was my
intention. And yet I was filled .with admiration
for this clean giant of a man.
When Mitchell's friends realized that he had not
gone down they shouted their joy. Mitchell smiled
good-naturedly as I chased after him, and so
endeavoured to carry out my compact. He covered
up in such a way that he might have been clad in
a suit of armour. I tried for his chin, but I could
not reach it, and the seconds ;were passing, to the
unbounded glee of the Yorkshiremen, each of whom
was looking on with watch in hand. This race
against time — I had to knock Mitchell out in less
than seventy-three seconds else he and his friends
would win their wager — was glorious.
I plunged into the spirit of the thing as if a
fortune were at stake. So I went for his body.
Mitchell half dropped his guard, and I punched him
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My Fighting Life
to the floor. He got up after a short count, and I
knocked him down for the second time. But he
again rose, and although he was by this time
decidedly the worse for wear, he was on his feet, and
a fraction more than two minutes had passed. And,
holding up a little longer, had gone "one better
than Wells."
His friends screamed and roared their delight.
But Mitchell, I am sure, did not realize that he had
pulled off the wager, for he squared up to me, his
lips pressed tight, and determination writ all over
his manly face. He was still full of fight. Work-
ing him into a corner so that he could not escape
me, I feinted with the left, and brought the right
over and knocked him out.
Mitchell rolled over, and was seized and carried
away by his friends, whose manner suggested that
Mitchell had won the greatest conquest of his life.
It was a great relief to me when he came round.
I was afraid that I had hurt him. Mitchell shook
himself, felt his jaw as if he were not sure whether
it had been hopelessly splintered, and, laughing
uproariously, declared with mock bravado : " I have
wiped out the stain on English boxing. Now we
will all go to dinner and make merry, for all is well
in the world."
This little affair with Mitchell helped me more
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My Fights with Wells— and a Sequel
than anything else to understand the young men of
England. Mitchell made me think. He taught me
to understand what is meant when it is said : " That
man is one of the best; he is a sport."
We became great friends, did Mitchell and I,
and less than a year afterwards he, like myself, went
to the war. I am alive, but George Mitchell lies
66 out there." I am not an unusually emotional
man, I have never been suspected of being hysterical ;
but when they came to me in 1916 and told me
that he had been killed, I took myself into a corner,
bit my lips so that blood came from them, and
cried.
George Mitchell would not have had any other
death. If it is ever possible, I will go to the grave
of George Mitchell and say to him, " George, I
know how you fought. You kept your guard high,
and you met death without flinching."
The last time I saw him was in a cafe in Mont-
martre, and I remember him saying, as he toasted
me in a glass of wine :
" Carpentier, I thought Wells went down too
easily. But I did not know you as I know you now.
It was impudence of me to say that I could go one
better than the Bombardier; and I shall always
regret that, in my stupid and hot-headed way, I
thought so little of him as a fighter. I don't now,
H 97
My Fighting Life
Carpentier, for now I know you are a wonderful
fellow. If only you were a Yorkshireman ! ' And
then, after a loud, boyish laugh, he asked: " But,
I say, were you really all out to finish me right
away? If you weren't, I shall never forgive you."
"Mr. Mitchell," I replied, "if I could have
knocked your head off at old Lerda's school you
would not have been here."
And with that good George Mitchell was happy.
CHAPTER VIII
FIGHTS IN 1914
FOLLOWING my second match with Wells I met that
very good and genial Irishman, Pat O'Keefe, on
January 19, 1914, at Nice. I knocked him out in a
couple of rounds. From then until the following
March I did no serious fighting ; merely did I engage
in exhibitions.
There had come to Paris again Joe Jeannette,
and I think it will be agreed that at that time he
was near to being a world's champion. From the
first day all Frenchmen began to talk about this
especially handsome negro, because of his tremendous
contest .with Sam McVea. I fell to wondering
whether I should ever consider myself good and big
enough to fight him. My second victory over Wells,
my quick trample over O'Keefe, led me to ask
Descamps to seek a match with Jeannette.
Descamps found Jeannette not only willing but
very anxious to meet me, and on Saturday night,
March 21, 1914, we took the ring at Lunar Park.
More than 6,000 people looked on in a building gay
with colour and ablaze with countless lights.
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My Fighting Life
Clang went the bell. Descamps patted me on
my shoulders and I hurried to shake hands with
Jeannette, who appeared to me as some great
big bronze statue. Fighting a negro is a weird
business, and it was as much as I could do to refrain
from dwelling upon the colour scheme which we
struck.
In all my fights I believe in aggression, and I
decided that if ever it were necessary to make haste
and never stop fighting, this was the time. Stand-
ing on my toes, I went for Jeannette at once, but
was sadly out of my reckoning with my left hand.
Jeannette, by an almost imperceptible twist of his
head, caused me to miss badly, and in a twinkling
he had hit me on my right eye. There was little or
no weight behind the blow, and I was able to shoot
out my left and land with such force that Jeannette 's
head went back with a snap. The negro set his
great white teeth on parade, smiling good-
humouredly, and then we got to clinches. The
bulging-eyed Cuny, who was the ringmaster, pushed
us, and as we broke I hit Jeannette with left and
right on the jaw, and down he went.
People positively screamed, and, like myself,
believed that I was already far on the road to
victory. But Jeannette was not the type of man to
be put out with one blow. He simply shook his
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Fights in 1914
woolly head, as would a dog when it'cbnfies1 out o"f
the water, and stood before me apparently little the
worse, although when he clinched I knew that he
had been badly shaken. His breath came in gasps.
I was determined to do my boxing at long range,
for I had discovered that I was much the faster man ;
obviously, Jeannette had decided to fight at close
quarters. Try as I would, I could not insist that
we should always box at a distance. The cunning,
the craftiness, the defence of this black man were
wonderful, and as some magnet he drew me into
many long spells of in-fighting.
Descamps, with much wisdom, was for ever say-
ing, " Box him, Georges." But it was not until
the eighth round that I was able to demand that
Jeannette should box openly. Then I have never
been so sure that I would win. This eighth round
was all mine. I raced through it ; I made it a helter-
skelter, and at the end Jeannette was palpably
distressed. He had been outboxed and often
befooled, and for once, when we did get to grips,
I did better than he did.
Even now I can remember every incident of the
round. I have never boxed, I have never fought
better or with greater sureness of winning. I boxed
and fought as a man filled with ecstasy. Here was
Jeannette — big, silent, tense, brave. Under the
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My Fighting Life
•/I ; '' *', '. ', •"«'-
light of the cinema apparatus his bronze had, so I
imagined, turned into green. But his eyes were all
sparkle — there was no tiredness in them ; yet each
time I hit him I knew I hurt him very much.
To the body, to the face, to the head, to the jaw
did I send blows, but not a muscle did this remark-
able man of colour allow to quiver. I almost
despaired of making any impression upon his cast-
iron frame. I was almost frantic — and then, with all
the viciousness in me, I drove my right to his
stomach, and Jeannette half staggered ! His legs
crossed, he knocked at the knees.
"Finis, Georges," cried Descamps, now red-hot
and hoarse with excitement.
I sent out my left hand and brought the right
over to the jaw, and Jeannette reeled. He was
dazed, and only by holding did he manage to survive
the round. How — neither I nor anybody else could
tell. If ever a man should have been beaten, Jean-
nette should have been at this particular stage. But
he was not, and do you know, he left his corner for
the ninth meeting like a man who had had a miracle
performed upon him. Instead, as I expected, of
coming up as a tired and thoroughly beaten man, as
he appeared to be a few moments before, he took
the centre of the ring almost completely fresh. I
could not understand it at all. It was amazing !
1 02
Fights in 1914
As for myself, I was now beginning to feel the
effects of the fight. Still, I commenced the ninth
round by getting home a right and left to the jaw,
and followed with a right, left and right.
Blood now trickled from Jeannette 's mouth, his
thick lips had become thicker, and I too made a
very sorry and soiled picture. I also was bleeding
and splashed with blood ; both my eyes were dread-
fully puffed, and there were many red patches on
my body, telling of the hard knocks which I had
received. I was aching much, but never at any time
was I in such a condition as Jeannette.
Half -way through the ninth round I feinted .with
my left, and [ swung with my right. But Jeannette
ducked so cleverly that I missed by many inches.
And I was teiribly conscious that I had been fooled.
My blood vas up. " Now or never," I decided,
and before the end of the round I had done much
execution with my left hand. Jeannette leaned on
me and held, aid was twice cautioned.
" Give him he knock-out," implored Descamps
during the inteval in my corner.
" How can .? " I answered. " You will have
to bring the guilotine to finish him. He is many
men rolled into >ne. I hurt him very much one
minute ; the next I cannot hurt him. Bring me a
sledge-hammer ! ':
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My Fighting Life
But how very tired I was ! My aches became
worse. My eyes were very swollen. But I could
see him quite well. No sooner had we begun the
tenth round than I slipped. Like the gentleman and
good sportsman that he is, Jeannette, anid many
" Bravos," lifted me to my feet. I made many
points with my left and right, but Jeaniette, un-
believably strong, forced himself to get to grips, and
I suffered in the in-fighting at which Jeannette was
a master.
There was more than a suggestion /)f wrestling
in the twelfth round when, I would hive it set on
record, Jeannette fought his best. I had been
terribly punished. My face was covered with blood,
and I felt myself rocking. It was as mich as I could
do to last the round out. When I wen/ to my corner
I was a much battered man, but I ralljbd in the next
round and gave as much punishment/ as I received.
But I was really in a very bad way. /Yet I felt sure
that I would win. I went all out jt> end the fight
in the thirteenth round. I was half cazy. I did not
care what happened to me. Into Jeaniette did I rush.
I did not think or trouble about a guard; I sought
to pummel his body. Jeannette responded with equal
vigour. I almost fought myself tc a standstill, and
my legs would scarce carry me to ny corner.
And then the fifteenth, wqch was the last
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Fights in 1914
round. It was the greatest, the most thrilling of
all ! People, I could tell, were hanging upon every
little incident, every blow. I fought like a demon,
though my body was cracking and crumbling. And
Jeannette leaned on and held.
Then the verdict!
Jeannette, M. Franz Reichel decided, was the
winner.
It was impossible for me to realize that I had
lost. By what process of reasoning M. Reichel
arrived at his decision I shall never be able to tell.
Descamps erupted like some volcano. He beat
his head, he scratched and tore himself.
Jeannette, thoroughly tired, sat on the edge of
the ring, his legs dangling. His friends tumbled
over one another to congratulate him, but he heeded
them not. Merely did he say, " Guess I'll hurry off
home. I am tired."
The verdict was the subject of much comment;
almost without exception every newspaper thought I
had .won ; at least I am positive that I drew. Of the
perfect honesty and integrity and good sportsmanship
of M. Reichel there is not the slightest question.
But I am certain that he made a mistake. And just
this little story.
A few days before I was to fight Beckett, Mr.
"Peggy" Bettinson entertained me to lunch at
My Fighting Life
the National Sporting Club. In a discussion of my
many contests, Mr. Bettinson recalled my battle with
Jeannette.
"Oh, yes," he said, "you beat Jeannette. I
was astonished at Reichel's decision, and many times
have I tried to understand how he made Jeannette
to be the winner. The only explanation I can offer
is this : Reichel before the fight must have read
6 Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and conceived an affection
for the black race."
But I have no regrets. At the time I was
intensely angry. However, my fight with Joe
Jeannette was one that any man would have enjoyed.
For though he was black, Jeannette was white
through. No more chivalrous man ever took the
ring.
Jeannette, his manager, Mr. Dan McKettrick,
and various members of the American party before
they left Paris, by their sympathy and whole-hearted
commendation, did much to make me forget the
bitterness of my defeat. As for Descamps, he had
me believe that my showing against Jeannette was
the best possible proof that we had decided well when
I set out as a heavy-weight.
For myself, I felt very tired, and from March
until the following June of 1914 I spent most of my
time holidaying. Now I could well afford to rest,
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Fights in 1914
for I was richer than I had ever dreamed that I
should be. I had still to reach my majority, and yet
the days when Descamps and myself were obliged
to go about with empty pockets, wrhen on some
Sundays we were glad of a modest lunch as a reward
for our " turn " at this and that estaminet, seemed
to be all a dream.
From the earliest days of my association with
Descamps I had been taught to be thrifty, and before
I met Gunboat Smith, the American, less than a
month before the war, I was worth thousands of
pounds a year.
The first obligation I discharged immediately I
realized that I had become rich was to install my
father and mother in the Cafe du Champion, in Lens,
and this they carried on with much success until the
Germans came. But of the wrecking of my parents'
home I will write later.
After my defeat by Jeannette the next contest I
had was not a very serious one. As a matter of fact
it was of no account at all, and my opponent, one
Philippe Robinson, I knocked out in three rounds
at Reviers.
At about this time the fashion — more especially
in America — was to talk and write about " White
Hopes." There was a whole army of them. The
popular impression in America was that Gunboat
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My Fighting Life
Smith was about the best of the bunch, and towards
the end of June I was seen in Paris by a representa-
tive of the late Dick Burge, and asked whether I
would fight Smith.
The inducement was £4,000. I did not hesitate,
and I went into training at Manitot. Smith, with
Bob Armstrong as his trainer, one of the quaintest
and most remarkable negroes I have ever met, was
soon in England, and I was much amused when I
read that at a reception given to various newspaper
men he declared that the fight would be a " cinch '!
for him.
I allowed nothing to trouble me in my training,
which I did in private. To prepare for a contest
with the merely curious looking on is an entirely
wrong thing to do ; at least, such is my opinion.
Gunboat Smith and his sparring partners set
themselves up at Harrow. He was almost daily
visited by writers on boxing and members of the
public. His work was for everybody to see, and
entre nous, Descamps, through a trusted friend, saw
much of the Gunboat in training, and the knowledge
he gained he, of course, imparted to me, so that
although I had never seen the American, I knew all
about him long before I took the ring at Olympia.
Despite his height and his complete indifference to
ceremony — I should liken Smith to a rough-and-
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Fights in 1914
tumble fighter — I had the feeling from the day that
I contracted to meet him that I would win.
The coming of the match was awaited with the
keenest expectancy. It was written that London had
gone boxing mad, but I was wholly unprepared for
what happened when I arrived at Charing Cross
two or three days before the fight.
I left Paris with but few of my friends to see
me off and wish me " good luck," and as Descamps
and myself threw dice on the train, we never imagined
for a single moment that many thousands of people
would be waiting for us in London. As the train
steamed into the great railway terminus in the
Strand I said to Descamps: "There must be a
riot. Look!"
The station was packed with people. No sooner
did we put our heads out of the carriage window
than a band struck up the anthem of my country,
and then — oh ! what cheering ! Before I had time
to realize what was happening I was pounced upon
and carried to an open carriage. I was scared. I
trembled all over. Men and women rushed and tore
about and scrambled ; they slapped my back ; more
than one woman kissed me. I would have run away.
I knew I was deathly pale. In a stupid, half-
conscious way I bowed and smiled. Never before
nor since have I endured such an experience. I
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My Fighting Life
feared the horses that were to draw the carriage into
which I had been put would stampede ; the band
persisted in playing music that threatened to split
my ear; and all the time thousands of people were
shouting and cheering. And when the signal was
given for me to be taken to the Hotel Metropole,
which was close by, it was only after considerable
difficulty that we could force our way.
The traffic in the Strand was held up, and from
the station to Northumberland Avenue I was pulled
through lines of shouting people. I was glad to rush
into the hotel and hide myself in my room. But I
was not to enjoy the quiet I would have had.
Outside, people — many thousands of them — had
given themselves over to cheering, and at the request
of the manager of the hotel I appeared at one of
the windows. The sight I saw made me dizzy, and
I do believe that had Descamps not come to the
rescue I should have fallen headlong into the street
below. I bowed and bowed, and waved my hand,
but it was not enough. Only a speech would satisfy
the people. And I spoke to them, but what I said
I do not know. The spectacle spread before me was
so amazing that I could neither speak nor think
coherently.
There was I — a French boy — being nestled to
the bosom of a strange people. What had I done?
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Fights in 1914
Beaten their champion — just a prize-fighter, I knew
I was ; and as I muttered and spluttered and grew
pale, and had no steadiness in my legs, I conjured
up before me the tall Bombardier. In the crowd I
fancied I saw him, stretched in his corner at the
National Sporting Club, beaten by practically one
punch in a match that had set all England alight.
And then I was at Olympia against this Gunboat
Smith, whom I had never seen, and I wondered
what the end would be. Would I win? Would he
do what he had advertised he would do? — make
me sorry and sad. Would he, by his triumph,
take my place in the affections of the English
people ?
So did I speculate, and then, positively scared
and frightened, I was permitted to retire to my
room. I had had a rough crossing, and though it
was but mid-afternoon I was glad to be put to bed,
for I was utterly exhausted. But sleep came fit-
fully. I would clutch at it and then lose it. Sleep
was some will-o'-the-wisp that memorable afternoon,
and until the night of July 16 I was restless and
fidgety, so that Descamps worried and wondered and
feared.
It was not until an hour before the time for us
to take the ring that I was my normal self. I then
felt as steady as a rock ; I had no doubt about myself,
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My Fighting Life
and I poked fun at Descamps because he looked as
if he were about to be executed.
The fight to me will ever be an ugly dream. It
was the biggest, the most lucrative, and yet the
greatest disappointment in my career. I shut my
eyes and see and feel every detail of it. Wonderful
crowd at the ringside — magnificent, because it told
of the world. The telegraph was ticking a few feet
from my corner, and thus America, itching for the
result, was linked up with the battle-ground. The
scene, everything, was wonderful.
When I came from my dressing-room and
looked round, the nervousness from which I suffered
upon my arrival in London returned. I was not
frightened ; I clung to the belief that I would win,
but the sight made it hard for me to cure my
imagination. I wanted to stand and gaze and
wonder. The effort it cost me to acquire something
like a normal state of mind was tremendous. But
I did steady myself, and then I took my first look
at Gunboat Smith.
There he was, with the giant negro, Armstrong,
by his side — all angles, huge, awkward, with a
monstrously big fist. I was giving away fully a
stone in weight, and as I took stock of Smith I
whispered to Descamps that I did not like the look
of him at all.
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Fights in 1914
"Nonsense," said Descamps. "Georges, my
son, half a dozen rounds, and you will have won."
I smiled — it was, I am sure, a very sickly smile.
And Smith I could heard drawling out to Armstrong
something about "this French guy."
" Seconds out! " " Time ! " called Mr. J. T.
Hulls, who held the watch. Mr. Eugene Corri was
the referee, and the judges were Mr. Joe Garreau,
of New York, and M. Victor Breyer, of Paris.
At the end of the first round I had discovered
that Smith was as slow and as awkward as he looked.
For one who came to England with such a high
reputation, he was almost agricultural in his ways.
His greatest asset was his strength, and his capacity
for delivering what was described as an " occipital
punch v —a blow delivered downwards to the back
of the neck, which American critics asserted was a
sure sleep-producer.
As customary, I pursued aggressive tactics. In
Smith's corner were seconds who thought the use of
uncomplimentary remarks quite fair and part of the
game.
" Eddie, it's easy for you. Don't hurt him,"
they called to Smith when, after I had punched him
with left and right, he came after me. In the
matter of boxing I showed that I was his superior.
Almost at once he began to hit low, and when
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My Fighting Life
Mr. Corri said, "Higher with your right hand,
Smith!" he begged my pardon; but the next time
he was cautioned he merely grunted, and in a whisper
vowed that he would soon flatten me out.
By the time the fourth round was reached the
American was puffing and blowing. I had hurt him
very much about the body. When I entered this
round Descamps advised me to do everything to
knock him out. Franc. ois was certain that Smith
Lwas distressed. His advice I knew to be sound, and
as I was then feeling grand, never better in my life,
I went all out to finish the contest. By this time
I could not see a soul save Smith. I heard no noise ;
I heeded no chatter. Only Smith mattered. I was
now my everyday self. The " Gunboat v was
palpably anxious, and there was surprise in his face.
I feinted with my left and brought the right to the
chin with all my might. Down went the American
on his knees.
" Stand back ! " cautioned Mr. Corri, as I stood
on tiptoe ready to spring at Smith should he get
up.
The excitement was intense, and I tingled all
over. I was sure that I had won. The " Gun-
boat," with eyes semi-glazed, remained on his knees.
Then bang went the gong, and away I cantered
to my corner, the happiest youth in the world.
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Fights in 1914
"It is over — I have won," I was saying.
"Bravo, Georges! Good Georges!' cried
Descamps.
And then — cruel surprise! — instead of the fight
being over, I learned that the gong did not mean
that Smith had been counted out, only that he had
been saved by " time."
Mr. Hulls afterwards declared that Smith was on
the floor for thirteen seconds, but Mr. Corri con-
tended that since it had been agreed that he should
have sole charge of the counting, it was for him to
decide. It is possible that Mr. Corri, in the excite-
ment of the moment, forgot to count straight away.
At any rate, the watch showed that Gunboat Smith
was put out in the fourth round by one of the best
blows I have ever delivered.
When I realized that I had to resume I was sick
at heart.
In the fifth round I again did well ; I was always
beating Smith. In the next the end came, but the
finish was one that no man would have. I was
declared the winner on a foul. This is what
happened.
Missing Smith with a swinging right, I stumbled
to my knees. The American said that I went down
because I was hit on the jaw. This is not the fact.
Smith did flick me on the jaw, but I did not feel
My Fighting Life
the blow at all. I went on my knees because my
failure to land with my right caused me to lose my
balance. However, while I rested on one knee,
Gunboat Smith, unable to restrain himself, and
with, as I thought, something like murder in his
eyes, came up to me and hit me so hard at the back
of the neck that I thought I had been beheaded.
Mr. Corri immediately disqualified Smith. There
was, as might be expected, a scene of considerable
uproar. Smith and his friends stoutly denied that
a foul had been committed. Smith admitted that
he had struck me when I was down, but he declared
that the blow was unintentional, that at the worst
it was a very little blow, and, apart from everything,
he should be given the fight because Descamps had
invaded the ring when the contest was in progress.
As to the blow which caused Smith to lose being
a light one, I can assure him that it was a very
lusty, vicious blow, and I did not recover from the
effects of it for some considerable time after I was
taken back to my hotel. And when I came to I
was as sorry as Smith himself that the fight had had
such an undesirable ending. To win on a foul is a
heart-breaking experience. Smith considered he
was the unluckiest man alive, and his criticisms of
Mr. Corri did not suggest that he had a high regard
for British sense of fair play.
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Fights in 1914
There was talk of a return match, and had not
the war come it is possible that we should have taken
the ring a second time.
It was arranged that I should remain in England
and fight Young Ahearn, a native of Preston,
Lancashire, who had spent most of his days in
America. He was one of a string of boxers under
the management of Mr. Dan McKettrick, and some
little time previously, at the National Sporting Club,
had beaten Sergeant Braddock, then voted to be
about the hardest fighter among middle-weights in
England. Many competent judges saw in Ahearn,
known in the States as "the dancing master," a
second Ted Pritchard. There was not the least
doubt that at that period Ahearn was a splendid,
even a marvellous boxer.
We signed articles, and I was to be paid £5,000
whatever the result. But the war broke out, and
I immediately let it be known that I would not
proceed with the contest.
117
CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT WAR : I BECOME A FLYING MAN
DESCAMPS, being much older than myself, was bound
to go to war. This I knew, and when the news came
to me that Germany had taken the field against my
country, I rushed to Descamps and found the little
man already packing up.
" Georges," he said as he wiped tears from his
eyes, " after all these years the time has come when
we must part. I am off to war; you, my boy, are
not yet old enough. You will stay behind until you
are called up."
" If you think that I will allow you to go by
yourself, then you do not know your Georges. The
war has come, so be it. I, too, will go to war, and
as long as it lasts I will not take the ring again. My
boxing career from this very day is finished. It will
be resumed when peace comes."
" But war is not for boys, Georges," declared
Descamps. " And you are but a boy. Rest — maybe
it will soon be over ; and your Francois will be your
manager again."
"To-day — now — I go to volunteer." I persisted,
118
I Become a Flying Man
and Descamps, having packed the last of our trunks,
called up Mr. Horatio Bottomley, who was giving
the purse for the match with Ahearn, and called it
off.
The next morning Descamps and myself were
entertained to luncheon by Mr. Bottomley, who in-
vited several well-known sportsmen to join us.
In the meantime Descamps and myself had been
to the French Consulate in London, he to report and
I to volunteer for service. I was determined to go
to the battlefield by hook or crook.
I put my case to the French Consulate, and it
was arranged that we should leave London on
August 4, but that was not possible. It was three
days later before we could start our journey. And
how different it was from any journey between Eng-
land and France we had ever made before ! Apart
from the vile sea there was endless chopping and
changing on the railway ; no comfort at all, only head-
aching excitement. And when I did reach Paris I
was sick and weary at heart, too hungry to eat, and
filled with wonderment as to what I should be told off
to do and where I would be sent.
Paris was an unreal Paris — a mad Paris ; its gaiety
had gone — only tenseness and sorrow and tragedy
remained. The war was but a few days old, and yet
I discovered that already not one, but all my friends
119
My Fighting Life
had left home — were even then in the thick of the
fight, and not one but several had been killed.
As my class had not been mobilized I had the
right to choose the branch of service I desired to
enter. So I plumped right away for the aviation
section, believing it would take but a few weeks before
I was flying in the air. And the prospect gave me
much joy. But I was quickly disenchanted.
The right to decide what service I would go into
was conceded immediately by the recruiting officials,
though when I look back I am sure the old, bitten-
eared sergeant at the recruiting depot smiled in his
sleeve at the highly coloured, entrancing picture he
knew instinctively I was painting in my mind.
"Aviation?" he inquired. "Certainly."
And in less time than it takes to write, I was told
to take myself off to a camp at St. Cyr, near Ver-
sailles, about fifteen miles from Paris.
When I decided on a flying career I knew abso-
lutely nothing about an aeroplane or flying. All I
knew was that an aeroplane was a machine on which
one flew.
The officer to whom I told what I wanted to do
smiled cynically.
"Oh, yes," he said. " I have heard all about
you, Carpentier. You are the boxing person, aren't
you? Ugh! Drive a car?'3
120
I Become a Flying Man
" Yes," I replied, wondering vaguely what on
earth had the driving of a car to do with flying.
" That's good," he said. " I want a driver for
myself, and you are the very man for the job."
With that he kind of side-stepped and was gone,
leaving me to try and realize that it was the role of
chauffeur I would be asked to play.
What a come-down ! What a flop ! I thought.
However, common sense told me that it was no
use protesting, and though I thought a great deal I
got ready to be a driver.
For many weeks did I drive this officer to and
from St. Cyr to Paris, and were it not that I longed
for the life of a real soldier the job would have been
most agreeable.
It was not long before I was made to feel that
the position of a chauffeur was an extremely diffi-
cult and impossible one for me to fill.
One day, after I had taken my officer to
Paris and was tuning up the car, a roguish little
poilu came and looked on, and, with a con-
temptuous curl of the lip, addressed me after this
fashion :
" So you are Georges Carpentier, the great fight-
ing man ! It's a lot of fighting you will do. You'll
never see the front. I like you as a soldier. They'll
keep you in cotton-wool, my boy; you are too
121
My Fighting Life
precious to be shot at. It's not the likes of you,
my son, who is to be shot at."
What he said stung. The temptation to knock
him down was very real and great. But I bit my
lip and forgave the poilu. My position, though not
of my own seeking, invited the jibe. But I was
hurt, and at the earliest opportunity pointed out to
my officer, who was my good friend, that unless I
gave up my job I should be put in a false position.
At last — oh, great joy! — orders came from the
War Office that young men of my class must go
to the front. At once I put in an application to
train for a pilot.
I had to wait many days for a reply, but at last
I was ordered to proceed to a special training
school, known as the Camp d'Avord, which was
near Lemans. It was on January 3, 1915, that I
arrived there. The work was exciting, and it was
only after three months' strict application and deter-
mination to succeed that I got through my tests.
There were many days when I feared that I would
not succeed in doing so.
It was on May 13, 1915, that there came a
certificate which passed me as an Army pilot. My
joy was unbounded. Never did I stop to think of
awful possibilities. The idea that I was about to
set out on a mission with Death always at my side
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I Become a Flying Man
never occurred to me. Getting my things together
with all the enthusiasm of an overgrown boy, and
suffering to be teased by my companions who were
to remain behind, I was soon ready to depart for
the main aviation base or depot, which was at Le
Bourget, just outside Paris.
After spending several weeks in comparative
idleness, I was ordered to join a flying squad at the
front under the command of Captain H , a
splendid type of man, always a sportsman, and an
officer who won much distinction and not a little
fame as a specialist in bombing raids. As luck
would have it, I was under Captain H for only
a brief period, because my machine was not suitable
for the kind of work which I was expected to per-
form at Le Bourget. So to another squadron,
formed for reconnoitring purposes, I was sent.
From the very first day after I left Le Bourget
I lived in the thick of the fighting for fifteen months
afterwards. My feelings on the first occasion I
sailed away on my aeroplane, in company with a
passenger who was to act either as an observer,
photographer, or to register for the artillery, pro-
duced a sensation common to a boxer when he is
about to enter into a contest with a man who by
repute is a terrible deadly fellow — one whose style
and method he did not know, whose height and
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My Fighting Life
weight and strength might be beyond him. I was
like a boxer who had rushed madly into signing a
contract to fight without knowing the conditions.
But my feelings, instead of setting me wonder-
ing what the result would be, only heightened my
keenness to get to grips and take my chances. I
relished the adventure of it all. I felt that my
machine would do anything for me ; it would do
anything I commanded. There was the zest, the
piquancy of the thing — to be shot at, to have
machine trouble, to have an unhappy accident, I
did not dream of. I felt that there was no sport
like it ; the mind, the body, the soul — everything
tingled. To flirt with and cheat Death, to do what
now seems impossible, was glorious intoxication.
Bullets have many times whistled round and about
my aeroplane ; shells have often burst perilously near
to it ; frequently has it rocked ominously, like some
drunken thing, and on one occasion, when I was
flying over the Vosges mountains, my motor stopped.
The silence was indescribable. And in silence I
believe I grinned and leered. I clutched to the hope
that I should live through it. The sense of quiet,
the feeling of utter and dreadful loneliness, of
impotency, made me shudder. The great mountains
down below, that seemed to beckon and jeer and
make ugly faces at me, quickened my senses.
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I Become a Flying Man
I dared to risk a landing. And I prayed that
the mountains would hold and catch me.
Down, down, down I glided, gently, gracefully,
like some majestic bird. Would I land? Down,
down, down I went.
Imagine yourself at the ringside. You see things
which a boxer neither sees nor feels; it is possible
that you see one or other of the fighters waging a
battle with all the odds against him; you feel pain
when he feels no pain ; the blows hurt you more
than they hurt the boxer, for the reason that he is
made impervious to pain by being in the very throes
of the fight. His concentration on beating his
opponent lessens his consciousness that he is being
hammered into defeat.
This, if you can understand my simile, was
exactly my position when I plunged into the fight-
ing at Champagne. I saw in it at that time nothing
abnormal ; it was just a phase of the war, and, like
every other airman, the fact that I was called upon
to fly for hours every day with the possibility, even
probability, of being potted and done for I regarded
as part and parcel of my ordinary work.
To go up alone as I did, to give sight to the
gunners, I counted as an ordinary circumstance.
When you get used to your machine your confidence
in it is remarkable ; you come to believe that it is
125
My Fighting Life
fool-proof, that it will not take to performing
impossible capers. And for some time I flew over
the enemy's country without experiencing anything
more alarming than being shot at from below.
It was when I had my first fight high in the air
that I realized I really lived in a world of touch and
go. Still, like every aviator, I longed for a scrap.
I am happy to say that although my machine was
not of the speediest type and lacked the mobility of
the true or accepted fighting machine, I came out
of half-a-dozen combats without a scratch. You
.would think, perhaps, when you go for an enemy,
and when quickness of decision and perfect control
of your machine mean everything, that you fear
awful possibilities. But you do nothing of the kind.
You live and gloat in your confidence in yourself
and your machine.
In September, 1915, I had a terrible experi-
ence. The weather was foggy, and flying meant
so much groping. I felt like a boxer whose head
is sent swimming by a crack on the jaw. It was
necessary, so foggy was it, in order to keep my
gunners posted with the progress of our offensive,
that I should fly very low. Time after time I was
subjected to rifle fire from the German infantry,
and my 'plane was riddled with bullets. Yet I
escaped unhurt.
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I Become a Flying Man
It was as the result of this bit of work that
I received my first mention in the Orders of the
Day. In them it was recorded :
" On September 25 had no hesitation in flying
at a height less than 200 metres over the enemy
lines during the action. Showed in many instances
remarkable bravery and energy, returning home
with his machine pierced by bullets and shell
splinters."
And at a later date I was awarded the Croix
de Guerre with palm.
Our unit had suffered so heavily that we were
rested. It was about this time that I received news
of my father, mother and sister. I had not had a
single message as to how they were faring since the
Germans seized Lens in October, 1914. The
message came to me through the good offices of a
German soldier.
It appears that while Lens was hemmed in and
taken a German N.C.O. was billeted in my parents'
house. Strange, for the Germans do not like box-
ing, this soldier knew much about the ring, also
Rugby football, and he told my people that he had
seen me box. When he left them he promised that
somehow he would get in touch with me and let me
127
My Fighting Life
know that they were alive and well. And to his
everlasting credit he redeemed his promise. Through
some of his friends, who were in Switzerland, this
German managed to get a short note to me. He
is the one German I would forgive. His note I shall
ever treasure.
Following a much-needed rest at Camp de
Mailly, I returned to the firing line to join a new
squad., which was quartered at a place right in
front of Verdun. The German push in 1916 had
just commenced. All the fighting I had experienced
and seen before was not to be compared with the
fighting at Verdun. I have read Dante's " Inferno."
Verdun might very well have been the inferno
created by Dante. Together with my countrymen,
I lived in hell for six long months. It was as if the
whole world was vomiting its spite against a com-
munity of folk locked up. We French were a wall ;
the Germans were a mighty battering-ram. All the
devices of the devil were brought into play against
us. We rocked and swayed, but we never broke.
I reached the immortal sector at the end of March,
1916.
One volunteer from each flying unit was asked
to serve as liaison man to the infantry. His duty
was to play the part of a " connecting agent," to
keep the infantry staff informed of the precise
128
I Become a Flying Man
position of the troops — both German and French ;
of necessity he was obliged to fly low and under
enemy fire; he had to run the gauntlet of anti-
aircraft guns, also machine guns and rifles. The
liaison man was scout, detective, adventurer-in-chief ;
the ears, the signpost, the watch-dog, the guide to
his infantry. On many occasions, so as to discharge
my duty properly and thoroughly, I flew as low as
one hundred yards, and right in the heart of the
battle.
Although the work of a liaison man (for such
I became) was perilous in the extreme, it had not
the brilliance, the exhilaration of sheer fighting in
the air. There is nothing so splendidly spectacular
as climbing ever so high, and then darting to
meet a Boche and engage in a fight to the
death.
To see an air combat is to have a hair-raising
experience, but to watch a liaison man you would
imagine that he is merely flying. The spectator
cannot realize, because he is so far away, that oftener
than not the pilot is passing through fire, that he
is a target to be shot at.
But I was pleased to have been a liaison man
instead of a hunting aviator during the gigantic
struggle at Verdun. The life I lived was a glorious
one; it fascinated me enormously, and it gave me
j 129
My Fighting Life
an opportunity of knowing and understanding the
heroism of the French infantry.
Of all the spectacles which I witnessed, none
made such an impression upon me as that which I
saw on October 2, .when the grand smash was made
for the famous fort of Douaumont. Our infantry
had orders to get there at all costs. Their
enthusiasm, their high spirits, their determination,
and their confidence that they would succeed were
such that nothing on earth could have held them
back. I witnessed all the phases of the attack from
my aeroplane, from the beginning of the intense
bombardment to the tragic, awe-inspiring moment
\vhen our brave poilus swarmed like millions of ants
over the parapets and rushed with an all-conquering
rush across the shell-swept area to the fort where
the Germans lay in readiness for them with guns
and every conceivable death-dealing device.
What an attack ! It was unbelievable, indescrib-
able. The fight did not ebb and flow, for our men
were inspired ; they were drunk with enthusiasm,
and, as I watched them from above, the temptation
to swoop down, to get out of my machine and
become part of the sweeping, unstoppable tide of
infantrymen was hard to conquer. I have lived and
feasted and gloated on those moments many times,
and then, when I have given myself over to reflection,
130
CARPENTIER WHEN AN AIRMAN
I Become a Flying Man
the feeling that the great world will never know the
countless deeds of heroism has made me mad. We
may only know isolated instances of giant bravery.
It has been set down that the aviator played
an imperishable part in effecting the capture of
Douaumont, and my observer and myself were
complimented on the field by the general command-
ing the division which took the fort.
Once again my 'plane was riddled with bullets,
and one bullet went right through my helmet. A
few days later my name again appeared in the
Orders of the Day, with this mention :
" Pilot of great skill and bravery, ever willing for
the most perilous missions. Brilliantly distinguished
himself during the attack on Douaumont, October
2, 1916, by flying over the lines at a very low
altitude during more than four hours, thus showing
complete disregard for danger."
As a result I was decorated with the Medaille
Militaire. It was presented to me just behind
Verdun by President Poincare on the day he visited
the immortal battlefield on November 5, 1916, in
the presence of General Nivelle.
I have publicly confessed that on my arrival in
London in July, 1914, for the fight with Gunboat
My Fighting Life
Smith I was absolutely frightened by the reception
given to me by the English people, but I do not
think I have suffered a more emphatic knock-out
than when the French President pinned the Medaille
Militaire on my breast by the side of the Croix de
Guerre. Following the decoration, I was on the
point of collapse. Reaction had set in. I was sick
and weary, and my mind began to dwell upon
what I had experienced and endured for six long,
murderous months. It was necessary that I should
take to my bed, and after a while I was declared to
be unfit for my duties. I was sent on an ambulance
to hospital behind the lines. My condition was
never really dangerous, but it was serious, and
eventually the doctors said that I was unfitted for
further active service.
132
CHAPTER X
MILITARY BOXING
FOR some time I stayed on the Riviera, and gradually
got well, but I never was in a condition to fight
again. So it came about that I was sent to a
military school at Joinville le Pont, which is a few
miles from Paris, and there I became a physical
instructor. My life and work there made a new
man of me. I began to gain weight and I lost
nervousness, and the day came when I longed to
return to the ring. I had not been on active service
long when I feared that I should never box again.
I doubted .whether I should live through it all, and
I even feared to put the gloves on and have a friendly
spar. I could scarce trust myself.
But one day I chanced to be in Paris, and looked
in at one of the several boxing academies in the
city. There young men were boxing, among them
Badoud, the middle-weight, who once defeated that
wonderfully clever boxer, Johnny Basham. I longed
to have a try to see whether I could really box as
I used to do, but I was afraid to blunder in the
presence of so many people.
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My Fighting Life
Badoud must have known what was passing
through my mind, for he said, " What about
sparring with me? " Excellent idea, everybody
declared, and after much persuasion and with not a
little fear, I took off my tunic and put on the
gloves.
Now, Badoud is the type of boxer who could not
spar gently though he tried ever so hard. I Jet him
know that I was in no fighting shape, that I had
done no boxing for four years, and asked him not
to be too severe. This was agreed, but no sooner
had we struck a fighting attitude than Badoud came
after me like some infuriated bull and hit me so
hard that he hurt me very much. I remonstrated
with him, but he heeded me not, and again he
pummelled me for all he was worth, so that I feared
that he would put me out.
Without saying a word, I feinted with my left
and landed with my right so that I knocked Badoud
out. He remained in oblivion for half an hour. I
was quite satisfied. I knew that I still carried
a knock-out punch ; I was certain that I would come
back to the ring, and I took the first opportunity
of acquainting Descamps with what had happened
to Badoud.
Here I would explain that Descamps, when he
presented himself for active service, was, after
Military Boxing
examination, rejected as unfit. And his rejection
led to his becoming a splendidly prosperous
manufacturer. In this way :
One day he was walking down one of the
boulevards in Paris, and met a former amateur
French boxer who, like himself, was physically
unfitted for war. He told Descamps that he was
engaged in making boxes used for packing Camem-
bert cheeses, and having a high regard for the
business qualities of Francois, invited him to become
his partner, which Descamps did. The business
quickly grew, for Descamps was keen.
And to-day he flourishes exceedingly at La
Guerche, some 150 miles from Paris. There he is
very happy, and it is there that I do all my training.
During the whole of my time at Joinville le
Pont I engaged in all manner of games. I learned
to play Rugby football, affecting a position in the
three-quarter line, and were it not that now I
cannot afford to take the risk of getting injured, I
should strive to get a place in my country's fifteen.
I went in for sprinting, and it is said that I am the
second fastest runner in France.
When I saw the war coming to a close I began
to box pretty frequently in exhibitions for charity,
but it was not until after the armistice that I again
took to boxing seriously. Then I sparred at several
135
My Fighting Life
of the big camps in France. To one, ;where the
Americans were, I was invited.
I was glad to go, but when I got into the ring,
scarcely trained and absolutely unfitted for anything
approaching strenuous fighting, and saw that the
soldier I was to spar with was a second edition of
Jess Willard, I began to quake, and more so when
the big fellow plainly showed that he was all out
to knock me through the ropes. How his fellows
enjoyed the prospect of his doing so ! At once be
rushed at me, but I side-stepped, and he missed
badly and sadly, and before he knew where he was
I chipped him on the jaw, and he lay sprawling on
the floor of the ring, much to my relief, for had
this American giant got close he would have made
me very sorry.
One of the most enjoyable boxing exhibitions I
had while I was still in the Army was at the Palais
d'Etat, Brussels. General Sir David Watson,
through the Hon. Francis Grosvenor, secured for
me leave from my military school so that I might
appear at a tournament arranged for the amusement
of the officers and men of the 4th Canadian Division,
then stationed in Belgium. The war was then over,
and I was awaiting demobilization. Some little time
previously I had signed a contract to fight Dick
Smith at Strasbourg, and also to fight the best-
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Military Boxing
proved English heavy-weight in Great Britain —
either Bombardier Wells, Frank Goddard, or Joe
Beckett— my fee to be £5,000.
I doubt whether there has been a more successful
military boxing tournament than that got up by the
officers of the 4th Canadian Division. The Palais
d'Etat was crowded, and to see the boxing came
the King of Belgium. The utmost enthusiasm pre-
vailed. How very different was it from the time I
first ventured to Brussels in 1910 to fight Wally
Pickard, the Englishman, and later in the same
year, when I was beaten by his countryman, Buck
Shine !
First, I was entertained by General Watson and
the Staff of the Canadian Division at their club, and
when on the Saturday afternoon I appeared at the
Palais d'Etat, the desire to get back to boxing
proper, to return to civilian life, to begin anew the
work of fortune-building, to see whether five years
of soldiering had robbed me of my ability to box,
burned within me. Oh, the glamour, the magic of
the ring! For five long years I had been away
from the public, and now when I appeared as
Carpentier the boxer many thousand men of a
country other than mine rose and cheered me to tbe
echo.
I was taken to brave King Albert and introduced ;
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My Fighting Life
the Duke of Atholl, General Currie, head of the
Canadian Forces, many great men was I privileged
to speak to on this day, and before I got into the
ring I saw for the first time since 1914 real, earnest,
tense boxing, for the Canadian soldier-boxer, to be
his real self, boxes with his heart and soul.
The time came for me to spar, and when I dis-
covered that I was to meet a British soldier named
Child, once an Army champion, I went to him and
asked him to give to our bout the appearance of a
real fight. And he did. He pulled out all that was
best in him, and when it was over it was said we
had done uncommonly well.
The King of Belgium shook me by the hand and
hoped that when I returned to the ring I would
know only success. And I remembered that after
I had fought Bombardier Wells at Ghent there was
a big outcry against boxing in Belgium. It was
brutal, it was not wanted, and it was decided that
henceforth professional boxing would not be per-
mitted in the country. And here was the King of
Belgium commending my exposition.
Belgium, of course, will box. She is bound to
box. All men, all nations must box, and the day
will come when glove-fighting throughout the
Continent will be the sport of the people.
My contest with the English light-weight, Dick
138
Military Boxing
Smith, was fast approaching, but I feared that my
military duties would not permit my training
thoroughly. However, I was fortunate to secure
indefinite leave, and I left Paris for the home of
Descamps at La Guerche. Here he had built a
gymnasium; attached to his house were grounds in
which I could run and kick a football. With my
dogs I would roam the countryside ; there could be
no more ideal training centre than La Guerche. It
is a little, old-fashioned, quiet world. There are no
glittering lights ; life is just one wonderful round of
peacefulness.
Yet I was not entirely happy in my preparation
for Dick Smith. At first I was filled with joy at
the prospect of getting back to the ring again, to
be with Descamps, to win again the affections of
the people ; but as the day of the fight approached
I began to wonder and doubt whether I would make
good. There were times when going back to my
old life again seemed unreal. I had wanted to get
out of the Army, and now I was free, though I
had yet to be demobilized, I hankered after rny
companions at Joinville le Pont. And how I did
miss my games of Rugby football ! I did not
thrive on my training at all ; I was worried and
heart-sick. It was not deemed possible to have the
fight at Strasbourg, as was intended, and it was put
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My Fighting Life
on at the Cirque de Paris on Saturday night,
July 19.
I had a great ovation when I appeared in the
ring, but I was not my old confident self. It was
the popular impression that I would beat Smith
without a great deal of trouble, and because I did
not win until the eighth round my performance was
said to be unsatisfactory. The impression was
created also among the majority of the English
critics who were at the ringside that I was bound
to lose against Joe Beckett, who by defeating first
Bombardier Wells and then Frank Goddard, had
qualified to meet me for the European title of .which
I was the holder, Mr. Bernard Mortimer, who saw
my contest with Smith, and was one of the judges,
was positive that Beckett, whose affairs he then
managed, would beat me.
To say I was disappointed with my show would
not be absolutely true, for Smith on this night boxed
better than any English heavy-weight I have yet
met. His defence was superb, and he made me
miss very often. Still, I felt awkward ; my sense of
distance was but moderate, and I had a difficulty in
punching like I did before the war. But I was in
indifferent health and not properly trained, and
when I knocked Smith out I was very tired and not
a little apprehensive.
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CHAPTER XI
ARRANGING THE BECKETT FIGHT
IT had been arranged that I should fight Beckett
early the following September, but a day before my
affair with Smith I received orders from the military
authorities to resume my duties at Joinville le Pont.
So Descamps, at my instigation, asked for the
fight with Beckett to be postponed until I had been
demobilized, and had had some weeks in which to
train.
Mr. C. B. Cochran, under .whose auspices the
contest was to take place, was naturally distressed,
and he pleaded with me to appear at Olympia in
September as I had contracted to do. It would
have been madness for me to have done so, and I
insisted that if the fight could not be put back there
would be no contest at all, for how could I, while
under strict military orders, prepare for a fight
upon which my whole future career depended? I
knew, Beckett knew, everybody knew, that the result
meant everything.
Certain English writers suggested that my plea
for a postponement was that I feared Beckett, that
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My Fighting Life
I did not like the job at all, and I could not under-
stand. From my childhood days I have been up
against hardness. Whatever position I hold has
come to me only after years of unceasing work, after
years of fighting, much of it of the severest kind.
I have been thrashed as unmercifully as any pugilist
in modern history, and the suggestion that I was
a quitter caused me to decide that I would take my
chances in September according to programme.
Descamps, however, threatened to part company
with me if I did, for he said, " You will commit
professional suicide. This Beckett is big and strong ;
he has never been kept out of the ring by the war.
A better trained man there is nowhere."
But it took all the persuasion of Descamps for
me to tell Mr. Cochran that I could not get ready
to fight in September, and after a long conference
in Paris he agreed to postpone it.
At the beginning of September I was free to
return to civilian life, and after a short holiday at
Dieppe I began training at La Guerche.
Then came an invitation to have a contest at
San Sebastian, and on September 20 I met there
one Croiselles. It was easy to beat him in two
rounds. The King of Spain was present at the
ringside, and offered to me his congratulations and
good wishes.
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Arranging the Beckett Fight
I began in real earnestness to prepare for Beckett
with the coming of October. By now I was settled
in my mind; training was not now an irksome
business. I had witnessed the defeat of Wells by
Beckett, but the Bombardier so clearly beat him-
self that I was not certain what manner of man the
Englishman was.
Descamps, therefore, hit upon the idea of going
to London to watch Beckett's fight with Goddard
at Olympia. He returned much impressed, though
he assured me that I should win in less than six
rounds. And one evening I stole away from La
Guerche to Paris in order to see Beckett spar with
his brother George. And what I saw was most
helpful. Back to La Guerche I went, and after
McGoorty had lost to Beckett I invited him to
come and assist me in my training.
He did not remain in my camp more than two
or three days, and when he returned to England
generous odds began to be bet on Beckett, which
Descamps considered to be "good business," for,
he said, " it was just what I wanted. The tale has
gone forth that you are not the Carpentier of old.
Which is as well that the people think so, for now
do I bet much money."
And he did — with the result that after the fight
he, together with my countrymen, returned to
My Fighting Life
France richer by many thousands of pounds. But
it was really Descamps who first caused odds to be
offered on Beckett. On the morning of my fight
with Dick Smith, at the ^weighing in, which was
done in the Bois de Boulogne, Descamps sought out
Mr. Mortimer and offered to lay a level thousand
pounds that I would beat Beckett. Said Mr.
Mortimer, " There is plenty of time to speak about
betting."
After the contest with Smith, Mr. Mortimer,
who cFearly showed that he was not at all impressed
by my display, asked Descamps, " What about
making a bet now? "
" Certainly, '•' replied my manager. " I take six
to four. I must have odds."
Mr. Mortimer did not bet, but from that moment
Beckett was favourite. The wily Descamps had
made him favourite, and when he took Charles
Ledoux to London to meet the wonderful Driscoll
he accepted from one English sportsman £1,000 to
£800.
Into the reasons why McGoorty did not remain
in my training camp for longer than a few days I
will not enter, but I shall ever be grateful to him
for coming to La Guerche, for in what little boxing
I had with him I did not attach to his defeat by
Beckett the significance I had previously done. I
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Arranging the Beckett Fight
would not have it that Beckett had accomplished
something very wonderful.
My training at La Guerche was a genuine
pleasure, and when I came to London on the night
of November 6 I was trained to perfection; indeed,
it would have suited me better if, instead of going
to Stanmore for nearly a month, I had taken the
ring two or three days after my arrival in London.
The wonderful reception given to me on the
night of my coming to England made me wish for
the fight to begin. My reception was almost like
that accorded me when I came to do battle with'
Gunboat Smith. The English people I count as my
best friends. They are the most sympathetic, the
most appreciative people in the world. And they
are the very embodiment of fair play. Their
generosity is unbounded.
It is often said that the British are cold and
austere, that they go through life with the curb on.
As I have come to understand them, they are
intensely emotional and wonderfully demonstrative,
and if I were asked, I should say without the least
hesitation that no boxer, no matter what his
nationality is, so long as he plays fair and above-
board, need desire a better playground than
England, no better or truer friends than the
English. From the very first day I appeared in
My Fighting Life
London I have known only kindness ; there have
been times when I have wished that I were of the
English people, when, indeed, I have come to
believe myself English.
I found Stanmore a delightful place. I loved to
roam and run about its lanes; I was interested in
the people, and in the boys of the famous Harrow
School especially. On many days did boys from the
school on the hill come to my training quarters and
beg me to allow them to see me box.
They were great sportsmen, every one of thejn.
They and others helped to shorten and brighten my
days at Stanmore, but whilst there was a general
conspiracy to make me happy there, I do not think
when I have to do my fighting in London again
that I shall finish my training in England. I had
the greatest difficulty in adapting myself to what
were entirely foreign conditions, and, worse, it was
only the vigilance of Descamps that kept my
gymnasium private. There were many occasions
when even he failed to keep away the merely curious.
A boxer, in order to acquire perfect physical fitness,
must do his work behind closed doors; training in
public is bad, it prevents complete concentration.
With the public looking on one is apt to be
restrained, and so it was that I insisted that none
but my friends or those who come to me with
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Arranging the Beckett Fight
introductions should be allowed to crowd my
gymnasium.
Beckett, you will remember, did his training in
the public baths of Southampton, and, if he will
pardon my saying so, I think he made a great
mistake. I would say to all boxers that training
should be essentially their own affair.
What I missed most at Stanmore was my dog,
Flip, a black Chow, which had been my constant
companion for years. We had become inseparable.
Such was my condition a month before the fight
that I had not very heavy work to do at Stanmore.
Arthur Townley, the Birkenhead sailor, offered to
become one of my sparring partners, also Harry
Reeve, the former light heavy-weight champion,
but I decided to be helped by a young Englishman
named Blumenfeld, a worthy and most promising
boxer, and one with more than average intelligence.
I was also assisted by Jules Lenaers, the middle-
weight champion of Belgium.
Madame Vanebroucq, the mother-in-law of
Descamps, gave a touch of homeliness to our camp,
and Mr. Gus Wilson, a much-travelled man, was
my masseur. We made a happy family, but there
often burst upon us men and women who found
their way to Stanmore because of their curiosity, and
for one whole month I was constantly buttonholed
'47
My Fighting Life
for my autograph. Daily hundreds of letters reached
me, mostly from ladies, and accompanying many of
them were mascots of all shapes and sizes. Without
any exaggeration, before the fight I received at least
a couple of hundred mascots, more than one offer
of marriage, one offer of the use of a mansion in
the neighbourhood of Park Lane during my stay in
London, and tons of advice from all manner pf
people.
The weather while I was at Stanmore was most
unfavourable for outdoor work, but there was not
a single morning when I was not on the road, walk-
ing, running or skipping, with one or other of my
sparring partners ; but after the first ten days time
hung heavily upon me, and I chafed and fretted
under the monotony of it all. What I would have
done had I not been able to visit the National
Sporting Club on Monday nights and also look
on boxing at the Holborn Stadium I do not
know.
Stifl, all went well until the night before the
fight, and then there came into my right arm an
ugly swelling and much pain. Happily, my doctor
had come from Paris, and by repeated application
of hot poultices and massaging I woke the following-
morning to find that the swelling had been consider-
ably reduced. Yet everybody in my camp was much
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Arranging the Beckett Fight
concerned. Descamps feared the worst, for he said,
" It must be with your right hand that you knock
Beckett out." We were successful in hiding my
arm trouble, for the limb was painted, and the
discoloration that had set in could scarce be
noticed.
149
CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT FIGHT
I SHALL never forget leaving my hotel at Stanmore
to drive to London for the great fight. My chauffeur,
who had seen much war service and had been over
the top at least half a dozen times — a stout fellow
is he — was pale and trembling, and when I spoke
to him he found it hard to reply.
" What is the matter? " I inquired.
"Nothing; but I do wish we were there. I
have never felt so nervous before, and I would rather
go over the top to-night than drive you to the
Holborn Stadium."
I laughed right heartily, and then he steeled him-
self, jumped to the wheel, and we were off.
Not a word was spoken about the fight on the
journey. It jvas almost a silent one, and I must con-
fess that I was not altogether easy in my mind. I
suffered a strange fluttering in my inside, and I was
glad when I got to my dressing-room, there to lie
down until it was time to dress.
I had stripped and was ready for the call to the
ring, when there came into my room a middle-aged
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The Great Fight
gentleman whom I had never seen before. It was
understood that I was to be left entirely alone, and
his appearance was at once a puzzle and an annoy-
ance. I was stretched on a couch, and by my side
was M. Victor Breyer, the editor of the Echo des
Sports.
The stranger shook hands, and in a muffled
voice spoke so quickly that I did not comprehend
what he said, and I begged M. Breyer to act as
interpreter.
"This gentleman," said M. Breyer in his most
courtly manner, " is the High Commissioner of the
London Police. He has come on behalf of all the
policemen of London to offer their greetings and
hope that you will win."
" Merci9 monsieur," I cried, as I shook him
warmly by the hand ; and the gentleman departed.
Now this is what the gentleman, who was a
highly placed official in the police force, had come
for and did say :
"It is my duty to tell you that you must take
all consequences for the fight in which you are
about to engage. If there is an accident you will
have to answer for it. I have already cautioned
Beckett."
M. Breyer, fearing that the possibility of an ugly
happening might worry me, and realizing that the
My Fighting Life
police inspector didn't know a word of French, and
also knowing that I had not in the least grasped the
purpose of the gentleman's visit, turned the caution
into an encouraging message of goodwill.
And I really believed that the London police
were with me to a man, for M. Breyer gave no indi-
cation that he was playing a game of spoof. And
when he left my room the police inspector was
profuse in his thanks and said to M. Breyer, " I am
very sorry that I cannot allow you a fee acting as
my interpreter ! '
Oh ! how long it was before they were ready for
Beckett and myself to fight. Every minute seemed
an hour. I rocked and rolled on my couch. " How
long yet? " I was for ever calling to the overwrought
Descamps. Then at last.
I jumped to my feet, and as if by magic my
nervousness left me. I felt as steady as a rock; I
was certain that I would win, and as I was going
out of my room I chucked the excited Descamps
under the chin.
" Tres bien," he muttered, and in a trice I (was
making my way to the ring-side.
What a shout of .welcome was I given ! What
a mighty crowd was present, and how the lights
blinked and dazzled! I sprang into the ring, blew7
kisses to the people, and went to shake Beckett by
15*
The Great Fight
the hand. To the left of my corner sat the Prince
of Wales, and as I bowed to him he returned a
pleasant look of recognition. His handsome, boyish
face, his keen, tense interest in all the preliminaries
to the fight, his very presence at the ring-side made
me happy.
I made myself thoroughly comfortable in my
corner, and slowly put on the bandages the while I
talked to Descamps. I purposely kept my eyes from
Beckett, and yet I could see by the way he walked
about, his aimlessness, the colour of his face, the
queer look in his eyes, that he suffered much
agitation.
"Francois," I whispered, "you have said that
Beckett is a man of phlegm, that he is the complete
opposite of the Bombardier. But look, he is all
sensitiveness. He is not sure."
" Oh, oh," chuckled Descamps. " Two rounds,
finis. Eh?"
And I had no doubt that he ,was right. I felt as
if I were made of springs.
It took long before the signal was given for us
to begin, for Mr. B. J. Angle, who refereed, first
addressed the people about good sportsmanship and
fair play.
Then, at last — clang !
I was out of my corner in a flash and on my toes.
'S3
My Fighting Life
Beckett advanced slowly, his chin tucked away in
his great massive, mahogany-coloured shoulders; I
imagined him to be flat-footed. He looked fierce
and strong, but I saw a clear road for my left hand ;
it was an opening as wide as a field. And I forgot
his bigness and all the stories I had read that he was
a human sledge-hammer.
Ping ! went my left with all the swiftness and
straightness that I could give it, and I reached the
nose. I felt his giant frame shake and quiver, and
I thought I saw stars in his strange-looking eyes.
He brushed his nose with the back of his glove and
grunted and snorted. He then came for me, and
I retreated so that my back almost touched the
ropes.
Beckett, with right and left, sought to punch my
body, but he mostly hit my elbows. Then he
clinched.
"Break! " roared Mr. Angle, and making the
most of my feet I worked round, and Beckett kind
of shuffled towards me. He failed to upper-cut me
with his left hand, for I bent my head back and
caused him to miss by many inches.
When he was almost off his feet — he certainly had
no perfect balance — I jabbed him very hard with my
left hand twice in the face. He was sorely troubled ;
I could see that his brain was muzzy ; that he had no
The Great Fight
idea how to make a defence that was not easy to
penetrate, and I there and then decided to try
my right. I had a feeling that if Beckett got
through the round he would recover steadiness,
and by the immensity of his strength pull himself
together.
I knew, too, that there was more than a possibility
of my right arm, still very swollen and painful, giving
out, and believing as I did that he had come near to
being bewildered, I resolved to take a chance. There
was his great square chin — to me, in the frame of
mind I was, many chins rolled into one — unprotected
and inviting a blow. Standing on my toes, pump-
ing into myself the full force of the nervous energy
within me, I crashed my right hand full on fthe
point.
Down went Beckett, and as he was falling I
upper-cut him with my left hand. Said I to myself,
"If he can get up again he is the most wonderful
man alive." For I do not think I ever hit anyone
so hard and so surely in the right place as I did Joe
Beckett.
When the blow landed I thought something had
snapped. My whole heart, soul and body — every-
thing—! put into that blow, and as I stood off I
could not suppress a feeling of exhilaration. That
which you call gloating did not take hold of me,
My Fighting Life
merely did I bubble with joy because I knew that
I had accomplished that which I had set out to do ;
and, moreover, done that which nearly every English
critic thought it impossible for me to achieve. In
seventy-three seconds I had won, for although
Beckett tried to rise, he could not do so, and he was
counted out.
The moment "ten" had been called I helped
him to his corner, and then I was shouldered
round the ring, the packed building ringing with
noise.
When I could struggle free from Descamps the
Prince of Wales shook hands with me and said,
" Yours is a splendid victory. I congratulate you
heartily."
How wonderful it all was! That which was
commonly agreed would be the hardest fight of my
career had been the easiest ; I won it in almost record
time by obeying the first principles of boxing. There
was no magic in my glove, neither did I employ a
hypnotic eye. A straight left, a right, then a left,
and it was all over.
It was very late when I was able to get to rest
that night. For hours at my hotel I was engaged
signing autograph books. Messages of congratula-
tion came to me from all parts of the world. As I
have said, many of my countrymen won several
156
The Great Fight
thousands of pounds, and it was a particularly and
pardonably merry party that returned to Paris,
where after the reception of my life I appeared at
the Alhambra for one week, and was paid £1,000
for my exposition with my good friend and sparring
partner, Jules Lenaers.
CHAPTER XIII
PSYCHOLOGY AND BOXING
FROM my earliest days when preparing for a fight I
have always striven to understand each of my
opponents thoroughly. Mere physical qualities have
never concerned me. The mind, the temperament,
the outlook, the point of view of the man with whom
I have been matched, I have endeavoured to study
and to know. I would insist with every emphasis
that boxing never did and never will depend upon
sheer or brute strength. It is a science at once great
and exacting. It is a game of skill, and as such it
must be practised.
When I was free to resume fighting after five
years in the Army I had first to make sure that I
could hold my own against a man who was more of
a boxer than a fighter; that is why, at a little con-
ference with Descamps at La Guerche, Dick Smith
came to be invited to take the ring against me. I
knew this Englishman, and I felt that if I could beat
him I .would be sure that my long war service had
not impaired my boxing. I had tested myself in every
way to see whether I retained my punching power.
Psychology and Boxing
Before Smith was induced to come to France I
already knew that in the near future an effort would
be made to get me to London in a match against
the best heavy-weight in Great Britain. At that
time I only thought of Bombardier Wells. I was
certain that in the opinion of the public at least he
was the best of the British heavies ; indeed, before
I had actually contracted to fight Smith, there had
come to La Guerche an agent of Mr. C. B. Cochran
with an offer of £5,000 if I would sign articles to
do battle with Wells, Beckett, or Frank Goddard.
" You will find," he assured me, "that your
opponent will be the Bombardier. He is certain to
beat the other fellows."
Beckett I had only read about ; of Goddard I did
not know anything, except that it was reputed that
he was a man of granite. However, I readily
accepted Mr. Cochran's offer.
As I have already stated, it was my great good
fortune to get leave to travel to London to see
Wells and Beckett. Before the fight I sought the
Bombardier, and I was amazed to find him the very
personification of confidence. " It will be us two
for the European title," said Wells. And I believed
he was right. This Wells told me an hour before
he got into the ring. When he appeared he was the
old Bombardier, the Bombardier he >was at Ghent,
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My Fighting Life
and later at the National Sporting Club — just a
bundle of nerves. And when I saw his condition I
left my seat, which was next to that of the Due
d'Orleans, and went to his corner to speak words of
encouragement .
Because he saw Beckett scowling he seemed to
lose his fighting senses. And so it was. How he was
defeated is well known. But I was not awestricken
by what Beckett had done. There was, of course,
his obvious strength, his splendid ruggedness, and
I knew that the knowledge that he had overthrown
Wells would be of considerable moral worth to him ;
but I confess that I was more interested in Frank
Goddard, to whom I was introduced on this night.
If ever a man was intended for the fighting game,
I was certain Goddard was. His supreme confidence,
his total lack of nerves, his grand, boyish swagger
set me wondering.
" It will be Goddard who will be my opponent,"
I told Descamps.
" Big, very big, is this Goddard," said Descamps,
as he pushed his fingers through his porcupine hair
and made characteristic grimaces, " but because he
is very big you will find more to hit. Now you will
not be able to get to London to see Goddard and
Beckett fight. You will be at your military school,
worse luck, but I will be there, and I come back to
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Psychology and Boxing
you not only with Beckett in my pocket, but if it
is Goddard who wins, it will be Goddard."
And I returned to Paris.
Back to London went Descamps in his most
serious and analytical frame of mind, to sit and watch
the Beckett-Goddard contest. He returned to me
and told me that Goddard, instead of fighting
Beckett, stood stock still and regarded him as if he
were no good. Beckett walked up to him and
knocked him down. " So, you see, we cannot say
.whether Beckett is a champion or not ; he has done
nothing. But still, you must from this day get it
fast in your head that he is the man you have to
meet. First dismiss Smith, and then we will prepare
for Beckett."
The postponement of the match with the British
champion from September to December enabled
Descamps to take another look at Beckett, and then
after my demobilization I began to train as I never
trained before.
This is how I began. First, Descamps made a
class-room of the gymnasium, and in it he put me
on a high stool, while he, stripped for fighting,
endeavoured to give a life-like imitation of Beckett.
Rare mobility of features helped him to assume the
facial appearance of the champion ; he bunched his
arm and chest muscles, and then shouting " Time ! '
L 161
My Fighting Life
he rose from his corner, his forehead puckered, his
lips pouting, his head bent forward, his chin nestled
in his shoulders, and went for an imaginary opponent,
which by his manner I knew he wanted me to believe
was myself. He swung right and left, and then,
apeing myself, he stopped the Englishman with
his left and brought the right over with a bang.
Down went Descamps, now, of course, as Beckett,
and I, assuming the position of referee, counted him
out.
" Now," he said, " you have seen Beckett and
Carpentier. You know what to do ; you know what
will happen."
I laughed unrestrainedly, but now, looking back,
the pantomime done by Descamps was not only
.wonderfully clever, but there was in it remarkable
prophecy.
On most days Descamps would give his repre-
sentation, and he would always have it that I would
win very quickly. He had arrived at this conclusion
because he held that I was faster and had a better
knowledge of how to employ the left hand. The
effectiveness, the efficiency of the left hand I shall
always preach.
But it was not because I was faster than Beckett
that brought victory to me ; it was the sure and
methodical way in which I trained, and because of
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Psychology and Boxing
the hours and the days I spent in seeking to under-
stand him. In selecting my sparring partners,
Descamps employed men who were as near as possible
of the same shape and size as Beckett, and he laid
it down that they must try to fight like Beckett
would fight. And so, when I put the gloves on with
them, I found it easy to believe that I was actually
up against the English champion. For one whole
month I worked hard and with enthusiasm, and the
feeling that comes from physical fitness was delight-
ful.
When the news first came to us that generous
odds were being laid on Beckett, Descamps, the soul
of thoroughness, caused a mutual friend to go to
London and find out for what reason the English-
man was such a pronounced favourite, also to take
all the odds offered. He returned to La Guerche
with this story :
" In the city of London I found that the impres-
sion was that you were half a dead man. Here it
was stated that you were consumptive ; there that
you were a drug-taker ; again that you had no heart
for further fighting ; that you had merely entered
into the contest to get hold of some money ; that
Beckett was held to be unbeatable."
It is a fact that an impression got abroad that
I was a sick man. When I went to London to see
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My Fighting Life
Beckett fight Wells, and was standing in the recep-
tion room of the Pavilion in Piccadilly, one gentle-
man associated .with the newspapers, believing that
I knew no English, said in a particularly loud and
contemptuous voice, "What do you think of him?
He looks as if he is dying ; if they don't hurry up
and put him in cotton-wool he will be after turning
up his toes." And from these and other remarks
I gathered that it was thought that I had been going
the pace.
As for the Beckett party, I never knew more
confident people ; but there were times when they
advertised and showed their confidence in a way that
was foolish and not a little annoying.
After Beckett had sparred with his brother
George in Paris, Descamps went to congratulate him
and wish him well. Beckett looked at the little
man and said, " You'll find that I am not the
Bombardier." And by his manner he told pretty
plainly that he was sure he would win without any
great trouble.
The idea I have formed of Beckett is this. He
puts strength before skill. I have a notion that the
knowledge that he can hit hard, that he is big and
strong gives him his greatest joy, and fills him with
certainty that he could beat me or any other man.
But what brought his failure in his match with me
164
Psychology and Boxing
more than anything else was that, instead of regard-
ing our contest as a game of skill, he made it a
personal matter, a thing of enmity.
Now, a fighter who is for ever gloating over his
immense strength, and is determined to hurt the
other fellow, forgets the very purpose of boxing,
and, worse, he loses all sweetness of temper. A
professional pugilist can never be an exotic ; he must
be hard, unrelenting, merciless if you like, but only
in the way of bringing his skill into full play. Con-
tempt for a man less than yourself is fatal.
Never during the whole of my career have I felt
ill-disposed towards an opponent. I regard the man
I fight as a professional man, not as a man to pummel.
There is not vice ; there can be no vice in fighting.
What is held to be viciousness in a pugilist is but
thoroughness, and there is no sane logical reason
why men after hammering one another in the ring
should not be the best of friends.
Take Bombardier Wells. If ever a man ruined
another man's fighting career, I did that of Wells ;
but we are the best of friends. When he fought
Beckett I was pro- Wells ; I shouted for him ; every
punch he received hurt me more than it hurt him ;
his defeat made me sad, and yet if I had had to
defend my title against the Bombardier I should not
have spared him.
165
My Fighting Life
Let me tell a little story about Wells. When
we had signed articles to meet at the National Sport-
ing Club we were photographed together, and later
we discussed our chances. Said Wells, " I will not
treat you so kindly as I did at Ghent. Give me the
same chances again, and I will knock you out."
" But why didn't you? You were too kind," I
replied.
* That's it, Georges, but never again. You will
lose your head next time. I will knock it off."
" That's right, Billy," I rejoined, and we both
gave ourselves over to laughter.
What happened in our second match is ancient
history, but Wells, because he lost and was derided
and made to feel ashamed, did not lessen his friend-
ship for me. Some of my best friends are men I
have beaten and thrashed in the ring, and there are
men who have beaten me for whom I have the
highest regard. And why should it not be so?
For some reason Beckett and his manager
regarded me with lofty indifference. Beckett was
sure that he would beat me, and yet he had never
troubled to shape ways and means. So far as I was
able to ascertain, Beckett's confidence that he would
knock me out came from the fact that he found it
easy in his preparation at Southampton to knock out
each and every one of his sparring partners, and to
1 66
Psychology and Boxing
finish long days of hard work without being in the
least fatigued.
It was daily recorded by those who watched him
that his strength was prodigious; never once in all
the criticisms of his training did I find mention of
his skill.
" Good, hard, rugged, brusque, John Bull
Beckett," I could only learn he was, and so while
he was performing wonders in his gymnasium I gave
myself over to study, and with the help of Descamps,
who read Beckett as I did, I attuned my mind for
an encounter with such a man as I determined that
he was.
But first, and almost immediately after my arrival
in London, I decided to take myself to the Holborn
Stadium and become thoroughly familiar with the
ring, the lights, and the general atmosphere of the
place.
On the first Saturday I was at Stanmore I received
an invitation from Mr. Leslie Knighton, the manager
of the Arsenal Football Club, to witness his team's
match with Bolton Wanderers. I was pleased to
accept it, for not only did my visit to the ground at
Highbury serve to introduce to me a typical English
football crowd, but it gave me my first experience of
a match between professionals of the highest degree.
On our way back from Highbury we looked into
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My Fighting Life
the Holborn Stadium, where Descamps got into the
ring and took its exact size. Arriving back at Stan-
more, Descamps had a ring fixed up that was of
precisely the same dimensions as that at the Holborn
Stadium, and so with Lenaers, Blumenfeld, and later
the French heavy-weight, Marthuin, all affecting the
style of Beckett, it was not difficult for me to suppose
that on every day I boxed at Stanmore I was up
against the English champion at the Holborn
Stadium.
I have explained that my hardest work by way
of preparation was done at La Guerche before I came
to London, and it is a fact that all the time I was at
Stanmore I jvas in a position to afford to take things
leisurely. I only worked every other day, and on
several occasions I trained in private at the Holborn
Stadium. The work I did there was most helpful.
I became completely familiarized with the conditions
under which the fight would take place. There was
not a single thing that I left to chance, and except
for my swollen arm no man could have been fitter
than I was.
It has ever been the rule of Descamps to spare
no expense on training. Money is of no account.
And training is quite as great a science as boxing.
First, every possible care should be taken that it
does not become monotonous, and always the boxer
168
CARPENTIER AT SEVENTEEN
GARPENTIER TO-DAY
Psychology and Boxing
must understand that it is done for a specific purpose ;
that every little thing you do is full of meaning.
Make your gymnasium your school or university, and
never go into training unless your mind is easy and
you are entirely happy in yourself. Fashion a time-
table, and stick to it. When you are at work, work
hard and with enthusiasm.
Sometimes I think there is a tendency to make
training deadly mechanical; it is just one round of
the same old thing ; variety is not striven for, and so
there is always a danger of staleness. No two men
should be prepared in the same way, and it should
not be soulless ; every effort should be made to have
a training camp a family affair.
169
CHAPTER XIV
HOW I TRAINED TO MEET BECKETT
THIS is the way in which I trained for my contest
with Beckett. First, Descamps and myself ex-
changed views as to the type of man Beckett was.
We assumed that he was justly entitled to claim to
be the best heavy-weight in Great Britain ; we readily
admitted that he was strong, but we doubted whether
there was uncommon elasticity in his limbs. That
he was a stone, and perhaps more, heavier than
myself was of no great concern, though it meant
that I should be obliged to shoulder a considerable
handicap in the matter of poundage, but this we
decided .would be lessened by my greater speed. And
what encouraged us most was the certainty we had
that Beckett was more remarkable for strength than
high boxing intelligence.
Descamps finished this, our council of war, by
declaring, " If you are to win, you must seek to
prove that mind can triumph over matter. If speed,
skill, quick thinking be of little or no account; if,
indeed, these qualities do not mean everything, then,
Georges, the sooner we have done with boxing the
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How I Trained to Meet Beckett
better. It is not sport. But I will always have it
that the accomplished boxer is preferable to an
avowed fighter. So far as I can make out, not one
responsible English critic has said that Beckett is
more than an average boxer; but they see in him a
wonderful fighter. What is said about him, how-
ever, need not trouble us ; it is our business to rate
him as the best ever. And now from this night you
give yourself over to me."
As soon as daybreak I was on the roads of La
Guerche. I do my road work according to the mood
in which I happen to be at the moment. A com-
panion I must always have. I might walk for many
miles; perhaps I begin by racing my dogs, or skip,
or sprint, or shadow-box. Whatever it be that I do,
it is done to give me pleasure.
The weather was hard and cold at La Guerche ;
on many days the roads were coated with snow, but
whatever the weather I insisted that when I was not
in the gymnasium I should be out of doors. There
is a tendency on the part of some boxers to allow
themselves to be coddled ; they are almost afraid of
the fresh air. When I am preparing for a fight in
the summer, most of my work I do in the open.
After two hours' walking, running, skipping and
shadow-boxing, I return to the house of Descamps
and breakfast — a mug of cocoa, and milk got from
171
My Fighting Life
one of Descamps' cows, and rolls ; and until luncheon
I do anything the mood I am in dictates.
Sparring, sometimes done after the fashion of
real fighting, gymnastics, acrobatics, and physical
exercises generally take up a great part of the
afternoon. From the moment I enter the gym-
nasium I never stop until I have completed my
programme. I do not permit myself to take a single
"breather."
I do my training upon a system vwhich is a com-
bination of systems. This and that I have embraced ;
this and that I have scrapped, so that I have built
out of the many and varied notions of how best to
gain physical perfection what I consider to be a
science. The exercises which I do are the outcome
of close study over many years.
All exercises that are merely violent I put at
one side, for that which is difficult and hard to do
hurts, and is injurious. For instance, prolonged
swinging of Indian clubs and dumb-bells, or what
we know as muscle-making exercises, I do not
approve of. I would not pass a man " all muscle ?:
as the perfect or ideally trained athlete. The
severely muscular man is only strong in a given^ a
set, test of strength ; he may lift a prodigious dead
weight, and it may be that he cuts an engaging and
imposing figure, but he is without elasticity, quick-
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How I Trained to Meet Beckett
footedness ; frequently he has no perfect carriage ; he
has made no special study of deportment.
As one >vho is a fighting man by choice and pro-
fession, it may appear strange Lwhen I say that I
attach every importance to correct walking. I would
put down deportment as the foundation, the root of
physical culture.
Having learned to walk correctly, the desire for
full physical proficiency becomes tremendous, for you
have then mastered one of the difficult lessons of your
athletic curriculum ; then it is that you know all about
poise, balance ; you have shed all awkwardness.
A diffidence to engage in physical culture comes
from a belief that it means hard work. I readily
concede that training as training is appalling in its
monotony ; it is a thing without a soul. If a boy or
man goes into training without first appreciating the
true inwardness of every little thing he is called upon
to do, and does, then he will reap no considerable
benefit. Whilst the practice of physical culture
entails much self-denial, experience has convinced
me that it is not necessary to eschew all natural
likings.
When after luncheon one day at Stanmore I
smoked a cigarette with my coffee, one of my visitors,
obviously surprised, remarked, " I have never known
a fighting man to smoke when in training."
My Fighting Life
Clearly he belonged to the school of hard-and-
fast principles. I call it the unnatural, as well as
out-of-date, school. I smoke a cigarette because I
find it comforting ; it helps me to know that although
a fighter in strict training, I may be my ordinary
self. In training the grand principle should be
moderation in all things. Blind, obstinate absten-
tion from this and that is as harmful as over-
indulgence.
And I would say that it is entirely wrong to have
dinned into the ear of a pugilist that he is a fighting
machine to be wound up and set ^working at will.
When I was given permission by the Army
authorities to leave the school at Joinville le Pont to
train for my contest with Dick Smith, the first thing
I attempted was to learn to walk naturally again,
and not after the ideas of a drill sergeant. And
immediately I found I could walk in a proper, human,
unwooden way I took to skipping and running on
the roads, not with any idea of seeing what distance
and how quickly I could run, but so as to develop
and strengthen my breathing organs, and, most
important of all, to acquire springiness of limb, to
create the feeling that suggests you are treading on
air.
If you would be entirely happy, seek to obtain
that rare feeling ; it is indescribably beautiful. Before
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How I Trained to Meet Beckett
I began to spar again for the first time for five years
I spent my days roaming and running about the
country .woods. I had for my companions sweet-
singing birds ; I came to know all the cattle and horses
round about the countryside ; I hunted, and went
shooting and fishing. I made myself suppose that
the beginning of my training was a holiday, so that
I was happy when I took up the boxing-gloves. I
was sure that I had begun to build up fighting fitness
upon sound and rational principles.
Those who would box well and with success must
enjoy every minute of their training ; they must never
feel that it is irksome. Let us begin with road- work.
Do not go rushing and tearing along. First walk,
then run, again do shadow-boxing ; skip ; if you have
a companion, play leap-frog, or jump a gate ; at
intervals swing your arms and legs ; try to give your
limbs every suppleness. And .when you return
from the road and there is skipping to be done,
make it a thing fantastic; try to do the double
shuffle the while you twist and twirl and skip over
the rope.
You will cause those who look on to smile, and
you yourself will smile. Make skipping a healthy
romp, and when you spar keep in your mind's eye
the type of fellow your prospective opponent is. Set
your jaws tight, keep your eye steady, insist your
My Fighting Life
trainer behaves as if you .were actually fighting.
Imagine that you have your man with his back to
the ropes ; punch so that you feel that you are win-
ning; wriggle out of imaginary trouble. Try and
think that the fight is going against you, and then
set your brain working so as to turn the contest in
your favour ; always be severe — the merciless, relent-
less, uncompromising man in your shadow-boxing ;
do not make it mere feinting, dodging or waltzing
around. And when you stretch yourself on the floor
of your gymnasium and bring yourself into a sitting
position and then touch your toes, do not do this
mechanically — splash it all over with novelty and
variety.
There is one exercise that I would specially com-
mend. Lie on your back, and, having made your
body rigid, bring your legs up slowly and touch the
floor at the back of your head with your toes, then
let the legs revert to their original position, leaving
them stiff, and bring your body up and strike an
upright pose ; then bend as if you would touch your
toes with your fingers, but instead stand on your
hands for a second or two before resuming a lying
position on your back.
If you do this you will strengthen every muscle
you are called upon to employ when fighting. It
may be that this particular exercise smacks of
176
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
acrobatics, but once you have mastered it you will like
it immensely, for it is splendidly interesting.
I affected this particular exercise or " stunt " after
first seeing Joe Jeannette at work in Paris. Few
men trained like this negro. It has been repeatedly
asserted that his greatness came from his extra-
ordinary stamina and capacity to take punishment.
But this is only partially true. Jeannette fell little
below a world's champion — indeed, had the oppor-
tunity been given to him by his brother black, John-
son, the probability is that he would have taken the
title, because he fitted himself for fighting by bringing
all his intelligence to bear on his training.
It was more than a year before I fought him
when I obtained permission to see him in his
gymnasium. At that time there twas no thought
that I would ever meet him. The methods pursued
by Jeannette in training were a revelation to me.
For hours he would work silently. He was like some
black panther; he made me go hot and cold when
I first saw him, for at the moment I walked into
his gymnasium he was walking on his hands. At the
conclusion of his work he saw that I ,was thinking
and dreaming about it all, and in a quiet, soft way
he had he came to me and said, " You cannot under-
stand why I think it necessary and helpful to walk
on my hands. Wai, my boy, I will tell you. By
M 177
My Fighting Life
turning yourself upside down you so employ and test
your brain centres that when you are hit on the jaw
your head is less likely to go spinning round. No
man alive can keep his feet if he is hit properly and
heavily on the point ; but if you follow this particular
exercise, which means that I shoot my feet in the air
and walk around on my hands, you become less
susceptible to that kind of drunken helplessness .which
is induced by a clip on the jaw."
Jeannette was no student of physiology in the
everyday understanding of the term, and yet of all
fighters, white or black, I do not remember having
met one who broke more completely away from train-
ing methods of a stereotyped kind, nor one who
showed greater intelligence in the practice of physical
culture.
History will perhaps have it that Jeannette was
only a bruiser; he was more. He was a man with
ideas, and in his way a scientist, and the antithesis
of the negro as popularly understood.
And how very unlike Jack Johnson, who was a
combination of sorts — a humorist, cynic, immensely
clever, but inordinately vain! Johnson demanded
that when he went abroad the lights should be full
on him. Jeannette was a great, big, honest fellow.
Johnson liked to prattle and employ a vocabulary
that was almost entirely a jumble of words. He
178
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
affected an intense liking for Herbert Spencer, the
banjo, dancing, diamonds, and high-powered cars ;
yet there were moments when he posed as a model
of modesty.
Jeannette kwhen in France kept clear of the
boulevards; Johnson strutted along them peacock
fashion. Jeannette was all for the quiet of his home,
and, though black, he was one of the most likeable
Americans who ever came to Paris, and I shall ever
be indebted to him for his introduction to training
exercises that have been most helpful to me.
To win a high position in pugilism a man, whether
a fight is pending or not, must always be in training,
mentally and physically. As the conjurer, the
acrobat, the juggler — as, indeed, like every public
performer — he must be always searching for new
ideas. To attempt something new is the surest way
of keeping fresh, both in mind and body, and escap-
ing a seizure of that most harmful and heart-destroy-
ing thing called staleness.
I have always been opposed to what is still a
common practice of a boxer being taken clean away
from an ordinary life when he begins to train for a
fight. It is more often than not assumed that a
boxer, so as to be " prepared," must be taken away
to some outlandish place, away from all friends and
acquaintances, so as to be free to think of fight, fight,
My Fighting Life
fight from morning till night. It is not supposed
that he is competent to think and decide for himself ;
he is not allowed to do so. He is put to bed ; he
is wakened up ; he has no choice of food, and he is
physicked and pampered. I have been in some
training camps where fresh air, I have suspected, is
not wanted — windows sealed, doors shut tight, and
altogether a premium put on an unnatural mode of
existence.
Every boxer should have more than an elementary
knowledge of hygiene ; no boxer should be made a
prisoner when in training ; no boxer should be called
upon to spend his days with gloves, dumb-bells and
sparring partners as his sole companions. Training
should be regarded not as something extraordinary,
but as an everyday business. And it should be done
to schedule. There must be method ; a time for
everything.
Let me tell of a little incident that occurred at
Stanmore. One evening I had just completed a game
of auction bridge with some friends who had come
from Paris. The cards ,were being shuffled for
another hand.
" I am afraid you must leave me out," I said,
"for I have not time for any more cards to-night."
" Why? " I was asked. " It is only ten o'clock ;
surely your work is done for to-day."
180
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
" Oh, no," I replied. " At ten o'clock I go to
my masseur for hand treatment."
" But cannot you go at ten-thirty? " one of my
friends inquired. " Half an hour will make no
difference."
"Oh, yes, it will," I ventured. "I have my
time-table, and I must go."
I mention this by way of showing that I attach
every importance to system and method. Had I kept
my masseur waiting for me he, very rightly, would
have considered me to be indifferent, and he, being
but human, would also have become indifferent ; and
if indifference or carelessness creeps into your train-
ing, then your training ceases to serve the purpose
for which it is intended.
And, next to system and method, I attach the
utmost importance to the life of a boxer when in
training being humanized. It must also have
domesticity in it ; if it has not, then it is drab, of an
ugly colour. The fact that Descamps has his own
training establishment — in other words, a house big
enough to take into it a gymnasium, and has attached
to it playing fields — makes it easy for me to have
homeliness given to my training.
My trainer, sparring partners, masseur, every
single person employed to help me, are as members
of one family, with Francois Descamps as father,
181
My Fighting Life
and, since he has suffered the loss of his young wife,
his mother-in-law as "grandma."
The two children of Descamps have also their
place at the table. Such is my training life at La
Guerche, that all those associated with me are not
only my friends, but each one regards the fight that
is pending as his own particular and intimate concern.
For instance, " grandma " will prophesy, " Oh, yes,
we will win all right." The five-year-old Descamps,
in his baby way, jyill declare that there .will be such
and such a happening; the domestics are co-opted
members of the staff; each single person in the
household is in training, so to speak.
" And how do you feel this morning, Henry? ':
I asked of Descamps' cowman, the morning before
we left La Guerche for London.
" Superb," he replied. " We shall beat Beckett
all right." And in a completely satisfied and
sanguine way went on milking.
I would that every boxer was able to do his train-
ing as I do. My evenings are made supremely happy.
When I have finished my day's work I will go to
the Cafe de 1' Union, and maybe for a couple of hours
I will live with the young men of La Guerche. Until
I went among them they had never seen a fighter,
and they have but a hazy notion of what fighting is.
At the Cafe de 1' Union I am not Georges Carpentier,
182
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
the pugilist, but just a young man who follows an
unusual trade. And, since they have but a crude
knowledge of the ring, they never air their views
about it, and, perhaps without their knowing, they
give me that distraction which it is necessary for
every man to have at the end of a day's work.
On a billiard table delightfully agricultural and
one which is remarkable for bumps and general
debility, great and exciting games are played.
That the lamps give off feeble light, that the cue is
worn, that chalk is at a premium, that the cushions
of the table were robbed of their springiness in the
long ago, that it is necessary to peer through a cloud
of tobacco smoke, matters nothing.
And after billiards, dice ; perhaps in a corner of
the one room of .which the estaminet is composed
young men will sing as they play cards. At the
Cafe de 1' Union, at the end of my training day, I
will forget for two long glorious hours all about fight-
ing. I am of a hearty, simple folk, and when I,
with my dog Flip — he happy because by all manner
of tricks he has entertained the locals — return to join
Descamps and family at dinner, I am as any other
man ; I have not the consciousness that I fight for my
living.
Dinner over, " grandma " with mock formalitjr
will announce that coffee is served in the drawing-
183
My Fighting Life
room, and with equal mock formality Descamps will
lead the way.
This is a typical evening at Descamps' house on
my training camp.
A log fire burns and dances merrily. In front
of it is stretched my dog Flip, so that he serves as
a pillow to one of the half -sleeping children.
"Grandma" is either knitting or mending. Des-
camps is fussing and talking the while he dispenses
coffee, and one or other of us will sit humming some
catchy topical song. Descamps plays the role of
harmonizer-in-chief, and, affecting the manner of a
choirmaster, insists that everyone shall join in.
Simple melodies of my country are favoured, but
I being " professor in English," will be called upon
for " If you could only care," or some such popular
ditty, with Descamps struggling manfully as my
partner. The piece de resistance is always a violin
solo by a friend, now manager of Descamps' factory,
who was once a member of the orchestra at the Paris
Opera House.
And there you have me — a pugilist at home.
Will you not believe me when I say that my training
days are happy — that there is much sunshine in them ?
When nights seemed indescribably long at Stanmore
I was sorry that I had left La Guerche so many weeks
before the fight with Beckett. But so as to escape
184
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
complete strangeness I took "Grandma" with
me, and she with Descamps endeavoured to make
our little room at Stanmore as much like the draw-
ing-room at La Guerche as possible. In it we had
our family evenings ; we sang and played and told
stories that had not to do with fighting. Descamps
drew liberally upon his repertoire, and we took a
delight in teaching Blumenfeld, the English boxer,
our favourite French song.
This Blumenfeld, a tall, red-cheeked youth,
entered into the spirit of our night entertainments
with gusto, and he confessed that he never imagined
it were possible to make training so pleasant.
The dressing-room of a fighter before and after
a contest is a world of its own. I often think mine
is entirely strange and remarkable. Before I take
the ring there is only one man that counts; it is
Descamps. Woe betide anyone who talks and asks
stupid, inane questions ; terrible would be his lot were
he to speculate on my chances. Mine is a dressing-
room crowded with dumb people. Everything is
done by signs; how different ,when the fighting is
over!
It was different after my victory over Beckett.
Descamps began by giving an imitation of how he
believed Dempsey would fight, for the benefit of
Lenaers, and in his striving after colour and effect
185
My Fighting Life
he landed so heavily with his right that the good
Lenaers was almost knocked out. Wilson, my
masseur, pulled furiously at a cigarette; everybody
shouted, and everybody thought it proper to hit and
slap and caress me.
"Now for Dempsey! " yelled Descamps, and
the while I smiled at the little man he was hammer-
ing at an imaginary Dempsey with all his might.
Needless to say, Descamps ,was the winner, but he
had not won before there trooped into my room many
Englishmen I had at some time or other beaten.
All my good friends and well-wishers.
Bombardier Wells came to me with his long
stride.
" Georges," he said, " I knew you would beat
him." And really, Wells, so warm and sincere twas
he in his congratulations, that it was hard for me
to believe that he was not of my country.
Until very early morning it was difficult for me
to realize that my fight with Beckett Lwas over. When
I retired to bed sleep would not come to me. I could
only twitch and roll and toss. As soon as daylight
came my masseur, who had not been to bed, came
and for two hours read to me what the newspapers
had to say. Messages of congratulation, presents,
invitations to dinner came to me by the hundred.
My breakfast took the form of a public reception ; I
186
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
was mobbed, I was stormed, and I was pleased to
steal away in my car from the hotel in London to
Stanmore, where, together .with a few friends, I
celebrated my triumph.
" Grandma " told a story of how, when she waited
for the result at one of the theatres, the message
came that I had lost, that she refused to believe it.
"But," she added, "my boy, the experience was
terrible, and it is only now that I have got you in
my arms and hear you tell me that you have won
that I know you have won."
I have already stated that I do not bet ; I have
never backed myself in any one of my fights. Every-
thing that has to do with money I leave to Descamps.
Money, as money, I care little about. It is Des-
camps who has made me rich ; he will squeeze every
penny out of my engagements, and he does all my
banking.
Within a few days after my victory over Beckett,
Descamps had quite a long list of engagements for
me. Following my appearance at the Alhambra,
Paris, for which, as I have stated, I was paid at the
rate of £1,000 per week, I returned to London, gave
an exhibition at the Albert Hall, left two days later
for Liege, then on to Bordeaux, where I knocked
out the American, " Blink " McClosky, in the
second round. Later, I sparred at the Free Trade
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My Fighting Life
Hall, Manchester, and then on to Northern France.
Subsequently I appeared in the south-western part
of my country, taking in Limoges and Perigueux,,
and, returning to Belgium, I visited Brussels, Ghent,
Charleroi, Antwerp and Ostend. After a short rest
at La Guerche, I went to Monte Carlo, where I met
the Belgian heavy-weight, Grundhoven.
A tour in Italy followed, and, en passant, I twould
mention that to my fight with Joe Beckett a member
of the sporting staff of one of the Rome newspapers,
one Signor Orlandini, was specially sent, and he
assured me that in the near future the youth of Italy
will take a high place among the boxing nations of
the world.
I appeared at Milan, Rome and Genoa. My tour
was a very delightful one as it was instructive.
I doubt whether many modern boxers have had
greater opportunities of studying Continental box-
ing. I have no obsessions, I write without prejudice,
and when I say that the strength, the possibilities,
and the whole future of boxing on the Continent are
most encouraging, I say that which is undeniably
true.
When I had the honour of fighting Croiselles
before the King of Spain in September, 1914, I
formed the impression that when boxing is well and
seriously and properly organized it will enjoy the
1 88
How I Trained to Meet Beckett
utmost popularity. When I met Croiselles, whom I
defeated at San Sebastian in two rounds, the majority
of those who looked on could not, I felt, understand
how a man, with only his fists and by speed of foot
and subtlety of mind, could have the audacity or
expect to beat another.
Toreadors, matadors, and men to whom bull-
fighting is the spice of life came to take a peep at me.
By their manner they would have me believe that
they rather pitied me ; but when it was all over and
I had beaten Croiselles, a bigger man than myself,
they were most prodigal in their praises, and would
have started a boxing lesson there and then.
I would advise any "old-timer" who has the
ability to teach to go out to Spain. He will find
that country easy ground to till, and will reap a
bountiful harvest. For Spain — at least, the people
I met at San Sebastian — has been smitten by
boxing.
It will be agreed, I am sure, after recent happen-
ings— Basham, Wilde and Marriott are the only
three British champions who have not been beaten
by one or other of my countrymen — that boxing in
France is of considerable account. During the war
and since peace came again there are few French boys
who do not seek to box. Given proper instruction,
we ^hall have any number of great boxers. But in
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My Fighting Life
England, so in France, in every country, there should
be established a national school of boxing.
After the defeat of Jim Driscoll by Charles
Ledoux, Descamps had a long and earnest talk vwith
Mr. A. F. Bettinson about the foundation of a box-
ing academy in London, and he agreed that if
Driscoll — the greatest English boxer Descamps
declares he has ever seen — were put in charge a most
necessary work would be done.
190
CHAPTER XV
THE FUTURE OF BOXING : TRAINING HINTS AND SECRETS
I LOOK, all Frenchmen look, to the National Sport-
ing Club of England, which is surely the home
of all boxing, to create the first boxing academy. In
Driscoll England has the perfect, the ideal boxing
master.
When I was in the Army I heard many stories of
his greatness as a teacher. It was Driscoll, by his un-
exampled cleverness against Ledoux, who suggested
a national school of boxing ; but surely the time
arrived long ago when the question of harnessing the
ability of old champions the world over to some
practical purpose invited consideration.
I have also thought of Billy Wells in this connec-
tion. In him you have a rare stylist; and a boxer
must have style. If he is temperamentally unfitted
to win a place among the world's fighters, surely
Wells could and should be employed to teach the
young men of his country. Wells, whether he makes
good in the ring or not, should not be allowed to
drop out. There is no tragedy so poignant as a man
who, before he bumped against failure, was petted
191
My Fighting Life
and fussed over, and who in the early winter of his
life had to jog along anyhow.
From time to time there have come to France in
the capacity of seconds Britishers whose names are
written in some of the brightest pages of boxing
history ; yet a short-memoried and unimaginative
public, now that their fighting days are over, would
count them among hangers-on. My heart has ached
and bled when I have known that for a handful of
francs it were possible to have them as your valet.
The establishment of boxing academies through-
out the world is of paramount importance. We
often hear of the "natural fighter," but the
" natural fighter " is not one who has not been taught
how to box and fight. Since my return to civil life
I have been astonished at the number of young men
fighting for a living, who have but an elementary
notion of what boxing is and how to box. That they
have a natural aptitude and liking for boxing was
obvious, but they knew little about what is called
the science of the game. The result is that all too
often that which passes for boxing is little better than
ugly mauling. Wrestling, clinching and hugging
and holding come from a lack of knowing of what
boxing is.
A well-regulated boxing school would eradicate
all these and every unpleasant feature which ha*
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The Future of Boxing
crept into the game. In my humble way I have
preached the need for approved and accepted boxing
teachers in France, and in Paris, at all events, young
men may practise the " noble art " at many private
academies. And in this respect I think France is
better off than England, and that in my judgment is
why you have witnessed the glorious march of the
French boxers to fame.
You do not count efficient French boxers on one
hand as you used to do ; they are splendidly numer-
ous, and I think it will be conceded that as a whole
they are not lacking in style, that they have been
well taught.
Perhaps not a few of them are too much inclined
to ape the ways of the " American school." But I
am not with those who profess to see no virtue in the
typical American way of boxing and fighting. I
would not say that Gunboat Smith or Frank Moran,
for instance, were typical American fighters ; neither
had any style at all ; each appealed to me as a stout-
hearted fellow who just fought. I will always have
it that Harry Lewis affected the true American style.
He so fashioned his ways that he embraced all tjie
best that is in English boxing, and by constant
practice, by diligence and high intelligence, gave
to it much of his own personal character. What
is called " the American style " does not in a
N 193
My Fighting Life
strictly literal sense exist. You will say, " So-
and-So is a two-handed fighter; he fights like an
American."
I am still a young man, but I am old in boxing,
and I have come to the conclusion that the reason
why England has not the large number of boxers as
in former years is because her young men attempt
to do that which they hold to be the secret of the
success of the Americans. There is only one way to
box : you must have a good attack, a sound defence,
and you can have neither if you first do not learn
how to stand, how to hit, and how to avoid trouble.
There are some young men who by their ways suggest
that they believe that if they crouch and swing their
arms they are bound to succeed.
People have said that I crouch. I don't — not in
the sense that I double myself up. I am for ever on
my toes and ready to spring.
What I believe to be one of the greatest weak-
nesses of young boxers is that they think too much
of what they call in-fighting, which, as they do it,
is not in-fighting at all, but a combination of all
sorts — clinching, holding, and wrestling — anything
but boxing.
Take Jim Driscoll. To my thinking he was the
acme of boxing perfection. The attitude which he
strikes is an ideal one. When he lost against Ledoux
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The Future of Boxing
it was said that the boxer had gone down before a
fighter. Which was absurd. Driscoil was a wonder-
ful boxer, but he was also a .wonderful fighter. He
did not bash and slap, and give to his arms the
appearance of a windmill. But in every phase of the
fighting he was a wonder, and was just as much of
a fighter as Ledoux. Driscoil lost to Ledoux because
he was old. It was predicted that I would lose to
BecEett because I was only a boxer and he was a
fighter.
My advice to all young men who would box with
success is to cut out of their lessons any weakness
they might have for imitating the peculiarities of
any particular champion. Because it happens that
A is a croucher and has won fame, they should not
imagine that the first lesson for them to learn is how
to crouch. Take the bed-rock principles of boxing
—they are the same the world over — and when you
have mastered them and you feel more at home if
you crouch, or affect this and that mannerism, why,
by all means do so.
Two of the greatest essentials if boxing is to be
good are systematic teaching and the establishment
of some school of referees. We in France, especially,
are not rich in referees, and I gathered during my
short stay in London that England, too, might be
better equipped. It has long appeared strange to
My Fighting Life
me that referees are not appointed by some recognized
boxing body. I do not say this because I have lost
matches which I felt I won ; I would make no com-
plaint ; indeed, my experience on the whole has been
most fortunate. But there are times when vanity,
and not experience, is the only explanation why some
gentlemen, perfectly honest and well-intentioned
gentlemen I would hasten to say, take the position
of referee.
The referee I twould have as much a pro-
fessional man as the boxers themselves. It should
be their first business; they should be schooled
in the duties they are called upon to perform
at a regular and properly constituted place of in-
struction.
It does not follow that a man who has lived in
boxing all his life makes the best referee; neither
does it follow that an old-time boxer is suited for
the position. I could not, for instance, picture
Descamps as the ideal referee ; he has not the judicial
temperament ; and really the ability to referee very
largely comes from temperament and long practice.
Whether the referee should judge a contest from
inside the ring or from a position outside is merely
a matter of personal taste. Nearly everything
depends upon the type and temper of the fighters
engaged.
196
The Future ot Boxing
If men obeyed the rules of the game, it is most
decidedly not necessary to have the referee always on
the top of them.
Now, in France we have a gentleman known as
the " Directeur du Combat." He is not the referee,
the time-keeper, or anything but a gentleman on the
spot to see that there is no contravention of the rule,s.
The Directeur du Combat can, and often does, serve
a useful purpose, but there are times when he will
come near to ruining a fight by his consciousness of
his own importance. He can, in fact, be a source
of considerable annoyance to the boxers, for he will
butt in when he is not wanted ; he will tear the boxers
apart when they are doing nothing more than
in-fight, and I am afraid there have been occasions
when he has upset the equilibrium of English fighters.
I hope the day will come when it will not be necessary
to employ him.
Personally, until a higher standard of referee-
ing is set up, I favour two judges and a referee,
as in the Amateur Boxing Championships. It
is a great thing to ask a man to be the sole arbiter
of a contest in which a considerable fortune
and the whole reputation of two men are at
stake.
As to the general atmosphere of boxing, I prefer
the way contests are conducted in England, especially
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My Fighting Life
at the National Sporting Club. English boxing,
when I have seen it, has been a model of de-
corum. It has been done without noise. Not
so in France. This, perhaps, because the majority
of those who go to it are but young and over-
enthusiastic.
198
CHAPTER XVI
A CHAPTER ON FRANCOIS DESCAMPS
I WAS twelve years of age when I decided, with the
full and complete approval of my parents, that it was
time to leave school and set out to swell the family
exchequer. School, as school, did not appeal to me ;
it lost all its charms, if it ever had any, the first day
I met Descamps and was free to have the run of his
gymnasium.
In Francois I found the first human man I had
met, also the strongest. It has been written, much
to my amusement, that I beat Beckett because I
hypnotized him, because I had put it on record that
once upon a time I was sent into a trance by Des-
camps; that I had suggested I dabbled in "black
magic "; that I had the " Indian sign." It is, of
course, absurd to suppose that I defeated Beckett in
any other way but by a punch on the point ; but when
I was a tiny toddler Descamps, at our first meeting,
did kind of hypnotize me, for I could but stare at
him. There was not a man in all our province that
was in any way like him — that I decided at once.
Poor he was, like myself; his home, his gym-
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My Fighting Lite
nasium, was no palace — mean, ramshackle — but if
he had more sous than francs, he had the grand
manner. It were possible for him, dressed though
he then was, to be courtly and formal. He was no
poseur, and yet he carried himself like no other man
whose home was built on the coalfields of Northern
France. It is often said that we are totally dis-
similar ; that he, because of his volubility, his excit-
ability, his gesticulations, is a typical Frenchman;
that I, because of my pale, bloodless, sunken cheeks
and cold, calculating ways, am no Frenchman.
Which is very true, but our very dissimilarity it is
that has caused us to be inseparable. Always has he
fascinated me.
When I first went to him, Descamps was every-
thing rolled into one. He was a master of Swedish
drill ; he was the first man to introduce English box-
ing in the part of France to which I belong, yet he
was a clever exponent of Le Savate.
In our poor, dreaming days he was an accom-
plished cyclist ; his machine, a high ordinary of a
particularly antique make ; and he was a gymnast
of much ability. And away from his gymnasium
he was a socialist of an uncompromising kind,
a revolutionary, an anarchist. Which reminds
me!
One day he was sipping coffee outside a cafe in
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A Chapter on Frai^ois Descamps
Montmartre when he was hailed by an acquaintance
of long ago.
" Bon jour, Francois. You look mighty pros-
perous ; what about the ' Red Flag ' now ? No
anarchy for you, eh? " was the greeting of his former
friend.
"No," snapped Descamps, his merry eyes
twinkling. " I am no anarchist now. I am a
capitalist."
But I remember the time when days were lean
and life meant scraping and scratching for an
existence, when much bitterness .would come into
his soul. He was a very ill-paid " Professor," and
yet when we had not a sou between us he appeared
to be happiest, for then he would take me on his
knee and picture a future that was all brightness.
Then; when his pockets were empty, he would ape
the ways of a peacock ; he was immensely proud.
I shall never forget the day when I was discharged
from my first situation, which brought me a salary
of fifteen francs a month. I was dismissed because
whilst on an errand I fell into the canal with the
rickety bicycle which my employer provided. I was
sore distressed and feared ructions at home.
" You need not trouble your head about work
again," said Descamps, " for on this very day I
have arranged that you take part in the Northern
201
My Fighting Life
Savate Championships, which are to be held at
Bethune."
Savate, as is known, is a game of kicking, and it
is one that demands much skill in those who would
practise it.
Although Descamps, when he set me up as
his "famous pupil," had but one intention,
and that was to make a boxer of me, he insisted
that I should improve my knowledge of savate.
Already, like most of the boys of the neighbour-
hood, I had taken to this form of " fighting," and
under Descamps I quickly added to my store of
tricks.
The prospect of making my debut before the
public was, as you may suppose, great — exciting-
memorable. It was decided that my parents should
know nothing about my contemplated "fight"
at Bethune, and literally I was spirited away by
Descamps.
These days we travel in semi-state ; then, a modest
railway fare meant ever so much. So it came about
that the journey to Bethune was a serious business ;
it was as much as Descamps could do to gather
together the railway fares. Those were happy days,
however. Picture, if you can, myself — a boy of
twelve — setting out from the little house of Descamps
with my fighting kit under my arm, Descamps swing-
202
A Chapter on Francois Descamps
ing a parcel of food, and singing as if he were the
first man in all France.
It is not possible in cold print to convey a true
idea of the mentality, the outlook, the point of view
of Descamps. In my flat in Paris there is a caricature
of Descamps which depicts him as a nurse. He is
feeding me out of a bottle. Many times do I look
and smile at it, for it tells, as nothing else can do,
of his deep and sincere attachment to me.
If you could but see inside the house of Descamps
you would have spread before you a gallery of pictures
and photos of Francois and myself that speak of the
rarest human story that has ever been written.
There is not a great disparity in our ages, but
Descamps from the beginning of our association has
conveyed to me the idea that he is more than twice
my years, and because this is so I have throughout
my career been completely obedient to him. I have
never questioned the wisdom of making any match ;
he has ever been free to say, " You will now get
ready for this and that fight."
So when after I had lost my first situation, and
he had made himself entirely responsible for my
upbringing, I readily agreed to take my chances in
the savate championships at Bethune. That I was
a little boy in knickerbockers, that I had never
wandered more than a few miles from home, that I
203
My Fighting Life
had not the faintest notion of what my feelings .would
be when I stood up before a crowd of people, never
troubled me in the least degree. It was sufficient to
know that Descamps had decided that the time had
come for 'me to begin my fighting career.
Our journey to Bethune I shall never forget.
From the time I left I/ens until the moment had
come to take the ring Descamps scarce left off hold-
ing me by the hand.
He introduced me as his " famous pupil " amid
a roar of laughter. Said one, " What have you
brought? What is this sacrificial offering? r
Descamps merely stormed and talked in his
grandiloquent fashion.
Why I was not nervous, why I did not run away,
I shall never know. I was in a world of wonders.
Descamps must have cast a spell over me, for though
a baby I felt a full-grown man.
My first bout I began amid a chorus of titters,
but I won, and I reached the final round. I became
the darling of the people. To win the championship
I had to beat a French corporal named Legrand.
He was a man some twenty-five years of age, and
weighed about eleven stone. My jveight was seven
stone.
But Legrand could not get near me. He would
rush and kick savagely; I would skip and side-step,
204
A Chapter on Frai^ois Descamps
and in the first round I had him down several times.
And in the end it was declared that I had won by
many points to spare. How I was embraced and
squeezed by Descamps ! And when he took me to
my room and dressed me, with the tenderness of a
mother, there were great tears rolling down his
cheeks.
Said he, " You have done a .wonderful thing.
Already I see you a champion, but, my son, though
you have won, there is no money prize, for as yet
you are an amateur. And I am without a sou.
Georges, we have still to get home. Rest awhile,
and I will think."
I fell fast asleep on a little wooden bench ; empty
pockets did not trouble me. I was so delightfully
tired. When I awoke Descamps spread out a roll of
bread, and when this had disappeared we went out
into the streets of Bethune. We stayed the night
at a little estaminet, and on the morrow, being with-
out our fare home, we set out to walk. And on our
tramp back to Lens we performed outside several
cafes, but we collected very few francs. We reached
Lens when it was dusk, so that no one ever knew
that the " Professor and his pupil " had been reduced
to tramps.
The story which Descamps told of my triumph
at Lens was a masterpiece in that no story was ever
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My Fighting Life
more highly coloured ; and it was not long before he
decided that at the first opportunity I should begin
as a professional boxer.
And the day arrived when I was to fight the
jockey, Salmon. Of my two combats with this
exceptionally strong and vigorous fighter I have
already told. And here I would only tell of my
earliest boxing lessons and explain how I ,was taught
the " science of the game."
To win success in the ring a man must first sink
his individuality in order to attain individuality.
Paradoxical this may appear to be, but there are
paradoxes that are not paradoxes. In this way : A
boy who places himself under an instructor will never
make progress unless he is entirely and wholly sub-
servient to his teacher. He must put on the gloves
believing that he does not know the first principles
of how to employ them ; he must reduce himself to
so much molten metal to be twisted and fashioned
according to the notions of his instructor.
When I first went to Descamps and made known
that it was my ambition to fight like the English,
this is what he said :
" 'We of France, more particularly those of Lens
and the part of France in which we have our home,
so I have come to believe, are specially meant for
boxing. Men of Northern France have much
206
A Chapter on Francois Descamps
phlegm, and in this game of fighting it is the man of
phlegm who succeeds. He merely needs teaching,
but he must be ready and willing to be taught. Into
the pages of boxing history I have delved deep. The
book which I will call ' the book of fight ' I have
studied for long, and I have decided that there are
what I will call fundamental principles. These are
for you to master, but this you will never do unless
your mind becomes my mind; that you think as I
do. You must do as you are told. You like fight-
ing ? Good ! But you do not know how to fight.
I will show you."
There was a time when, so it is written, the trainer
of boxers was a man with a heart of stone. A
Spartan — he insisted on the life of a Spartan. Now,
Descamps is entirely human ; he is emotional. Never
a great fighter himself — I do not think he has the
temperament necessary for a fighter — he is yet a
born teacher.
His gymnasium in his early days at Lens was a
poor, mean room, but by his manner, by the great
gift which he possesses of being able to make things
appear something which they are not, he caused me
to believe that it was a beautiful academy. He would
have it that it was an academy, and that was sufficient.
When I, a half-frightened child, went for my first
boxing lesson, for which, by the way, I did not and
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My Fighting Life
could not pay — how Descamps lived in those days will
ever be an unsolvable mystery to me — this is how
Descamps appeared to me.
In the centre of a room not more than ten feet
long, ceiling low and blackened by smoke from old
and feeble oil lamps, he stood bowing and laughing
and sniggering.
" Entrez, Monsieur Carpentier, also welcome,"
he cried.
Decked out in a sweater that approximated
Joseph's coat, his black hair, which is now splashed
with grey, standing on end, and slapping gloves that
were ridiculously big and broken here and there, he
enlarged upon the importance of his position — that
he was " Professor Descamps."
I have not made the acquaintance of another
professor, but I doubt whether there is one who,
before I had emerged from the embryonic stage,
could be such a martinet as Descamps. I am sure
there is no one who seeks to impart the noble art in
the way he does, or at least did then. I imagined
that he was arrayed in a cap and gown instead of
frayed old yellow flannels and a sweater that in the
matter of colouring was a rainbow.
I began my lessons by learning to stand easily,
naturally, perfectly. And I would say that it is of
the first importance to acquire a correct pose. If you
208
A Chapter on Frai^ois Descamps
will take the trouble, you will find not a few boxers
who seek to make a living out of the game stand
with their toes turned in, which means that they have
not learned their lessons as one kwould learn his
alphabet.
I attach every importance to stance, to style. If
you do not begin at the beginning in any form of
sport, you will never be anything but a splutterer.
In boxing, as in everything, there is a right and a
wrong way. Fastidious to a degree was Descamps
when he took me under his wing, and he would not
allow a soul to see me before I had got what he termed
the correct method. I distinctly remember one after-
noon in his gymnasium, for then he perched me on
a stool and delivered something like the following
lecture :
" You have come to me because you have been
smitten by the English boxers you have seen in the
booth at the fair. You would be one of them. No.
They are bruisers, coarse, uncouth men. They have
twisted noses ; their ears are big and puffed — balloons.
The fighter, my fighter, must be an artist ; he must
be a student, a doctor of physiology ; he must under-
stand psychology ; he must know men, their strength,
their weakness. The clever, the distinguished boxer
must be a man of brain, a scientist — no brute. It
is the skill, the science of boxing that I will teach.
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My Fighting Life
And when you go out into the world it will not be
as a man killer, but as a skilful, disciplined athlete.
Individuality, personality will count for much. It
will be as a man of stone, a man of ice that you will
appear to be ; of temper you shall have none.
" I, Professor Descamps, will be the one with a
temper, hot-headed, impetuous, a clown, a volcano.
And now you understand. For days, for weeks,
maybe for months, you will do no boxing. You
must first be prepared for boxing."
And with that ceased the stream of words, weird
and fantastic, which flowed from Descamps.
Descamps, having thus delivered himself, sought
to make me expert on a home-made trapeze ; he
taught me about swinging, the while he whistled an
accompaniment ; tumbling and general acrobatics he
introduced, and made me practise them so that I
could twist and turn after the manner of a contor-
tionist. All this was done so as to acquire a body
of elastic, and to this very day the acrobatic exercises
which I practised in my earliest days at Lens I
include in my training for a big fight. They serve a
double purpose — they cause the body to be all supple-
ness, they take the mind away from fighting, and so
make training a likeable business.
But what Descamps did not teach me was in-
fighting. It was Klaus who was my teacher in thij
2IQ
A Chapter on Frar^ois Descamps
phase of boxing, and by it — helped as he was by
Descamps, who, fearing that I would be permanently
hurt, stopped the contest — he beat me. I am certain
that few boxers really and truly know what in-fighting
is. It is not the mere getting and rushing to close
quarters ; it demands the highest possible skill, and
also it requires a most competent referee to appreciate
and permit it.
If I had not fought Frank Klaus and Billy Papke
— terrible, wonderful in-fighters — I do not believe
that I would have beaten Bombardier Wells at Ghent.
In him I was meeting a man who was not only some
stones heavier than I was, but one with a mighty
reach, and a left hand which, if he were to use it as
he can do and does when he is in training, would
take him right to the top of the tree.
It was impossible for me to hope to win by box-
ing ; that is, by leading with the left hand and bring-
ing the right over to the jaw, for though I stretch
myself to my fullest height, he was still very many
inches taller. Foolishly, in the first round, I stood
bolt upright and then rushed at him — madly, I con-
fess. Out shot his left hand, brought me up with a
jolt, and while I was shivering and shaking he con-
nected his right with my chin, so that I was half
beaten. When because of the softness that is in him
he permitted me to recover my normal senses in the
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second round, I remembered Klaus and Papke, and
I said to myself, " If I can only get inside his guard,
if I can only reach his body, I am sure I shall win,
for then I will be like Klaus and Papke."
In the third round I pretended that I put every
store on my left hand, that I would be severely
orthodox, and Wells, with but one idea — that to box
on approved lines, and conscious of his immense
physical advantage — was hoodwinked. He half
dropped his guard, and like a flash I got inside, and
I pummelled his body, muttering as I did so, " Now
or never."
" Do you know," Wells afterwards said, " every
time you punched I imagined that you were driving
great long nails into my body."
In these remarks I saw the nakedness of the fight-
ing soul of Bombardier Wells; his sensitiveness, his
susceptibility to pain. When I drove my left and
right hand to his long body at Ghent, Wells, had he
possessed the mental equipment of a real fighter,
would not have doubled up as a man seized with
violent, excruciating cramp. He would have stiffened
himself and not broken away ; his telescopic left hand
would have shot out, and I would have been held at
bay. I would have been impotent, utterly helpless.
Now, Wells can build an almost impregnable
defence, but only when he is away from the public.
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When I beat the Bombardier at the National
Sporting Club in December, 1913, a famous boxer
screamed "coward" at Wells; but Wells is no
coward — not a physical coward. Merely has he not
got deep down in him the mental qualities that are
absolutely essential before a man can be a complete
fighter. When he sent me spinning in the Floral
Hall of Ghent Exhibition, all he had to do was to
jvait until I rose, then win the fight with a right-
handed punch.
This I told him, and his reply was : " There was
something in me that held me back ; some unconquer-
able thing that told me I had done enough ; I was
stricken with your pitiable, helpless condition."
It was this indefinable, subtle something that
caused him to lose against the late Al Palzer. He
had the American all at sea — a half -broken, flounder-
ing man — then his fighting senses deserted him ; he
sickened at the spectacle of a sprawling man. It was
ever so with Wells ; he knows this to be so ; he has
fought to subdue his squeamishness, but when last I
saw him against Beckett he was the same old Wells
— an astonishing, remarkable heavy-height, who,
were he endowed with a gift of doing things
thoroughly, would challenge comparison with the
best men in all the countries.
Much has been said and written about Wells 's
213
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weak spot. It has been said that the weakness is a
physical one. It is not ; in a fighting sense it is a
mental weakness, and all the training, all the efforts
to produce a waist-line of steel will be of no avail.
He has not got the fighter's headpiece. To me the
position, the condition of Wells is a tragedy. Here
you have a man blessed with all the physical qualities
that go to make a world's champion, but he is with-
out viciousness — he is afraid of inflicting pain, and
this is the explanation of his amazing ups and downs.
But there is something else that is deficient in
Wells — he has not, so far as I have seen, endeavoured
to combine the best methods of the English school
with the effectiveness of the American fighters. I
hold that fundamentally there is only one way of box-
ing— that is, the English way ; but whilst I am a firm
and complete believer in the efficacy of the straight
left, I would preach the gospel of the in-fighter.
In-fighting is a wonderful science ; by it you can
reduce the tallest man imaginable to your own height,
but you must know how to in-fight. In-fighting is
not hitting in holds ; it does not mean muscle-pinch-
ing, done to produce a kind of muscular paralysis;
neither has it to do with wrestling or sheer scrambling.
Before you can in-fight you must engage in a
battle of wits by which you seek to squeeze through
your opponent's defence. Then, with feet fastened
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A Chapter on Francois Descamps
tight to the floor of the ring, you bring blows to the
body that start from the hip. Should your opponent
seek protection by means of his elbows, should he
strive to shake you off with half -arm jolts, you, half
resting your head on his chest, follow his arms so as
to anticipate and be prepared for his blows, and if
you do you will give to your body almost complete
invulnerability.
Much that passes for in-fighting is no more than
blind swiping ; a man will rush to close quarters and
punch with his eyes shut; he has no sort of notion
how to protect himself. Real in-fighting is not
cuddling, but much of what we are asked to consider
in-fighting is nothing of the kind, no more than
tearing and ripping.
When I was still a boy Descamps, whenever
possible, took me to watch Harry Lewis and other
splendid American boxers who had come to Paris.
During his first year in France Lewis was unbeatable ;
I thought he was the greatest man alive. So I studied
his ways minutely. What I considered to be his
speciality was the delivery of two blows almost simul-
taneously— left, right, one-two fashion. To do the
double punch properly, I found much study and
practice were necessary, but I mastered it, and
though to do it is to court not a little risk, the perfect
exponent of it is bound to achieve greatness.
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My Fighting Life
It was the Americans who convinced me that
supreme orthodoxy was wrong ; they, because in my
probationary days I saw more of them than English
fighters, taught me that a man should not fight twice
alike. Different boxers, different methods.
Let me endeavour to demonstrate what I mean.
If to-morrow I had to fight another Klaus or Papke
I kwould seek only to box ; I would never fight in an
uncompromising or slogging way, for to do so would
be to court almost certain defeat — I would play into
their hands by engaging in their own special game,
at which they are masters; but if it were Wells I
had to meet, I should be an out-and-out fighter, for
the odds are that in sheer, correct, orthodox boxing
the Bombardier would certainly out-point me, but
I know he is not considered a fighter of an unyielding
type.
Do you know what encouraged me to believe that
I would beat Beckett? It was his undisguised and
much-advertised belief and satisfaction that he was
a fighter. His very sureness of his strength, his little
thought of skill, convinced me before I took the ring
that he had but one way — to pummel and to batter.
I may be mistaken, but I believe that Beckett has
no room for finesse. Of this I was sure when I saw
him against Wells.
He rushed and tore at the Bombardier, and was
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A Chapter on Frar^ois Descamps
fortunate in landing heavily on the body of Wells.
Now, had Wells obeyed the first principles of boxing,
he would have side-stepped and escaped a blow which
made him sick and which beat him before the contest
had scarce begun.
From that night until December 4 I was positive
that Beckett would adopt the same tactics against
me as against Wells. Descamps agreed ; and in my
training I paid most attention to increasing my speed,
for it was obvious to me that if I was fast on my feet
and kept a .well-balanced head Beckett would not
catch me. It is possible — I really do not know — that
Beckett imagined that I would seek to do something
unusual, that I would bring out an entirely new
trick ; at all events, he was totally unprepared for my
doing the first thing a boy is taught when he gives
himself over to boxing. I led with my left and
landed, and I did exactly the same thing a second
later jvhen, after he had shaken his head, he came
snorting after me.
When I planted the blow on the place I intended
to land it, I found it difficult to believe that I was up
against a champion. " Surely," I began to say to
myself, " Beckett will not take a straight left again."
And I confess that when I sent my left out a second
time I expected that he .would either so deflect his
head so as to take the blow on the shoulder, or block
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My Fighting Life
it with his right after the approved and elementary
way. He did nothing of the kind, and I found it
hard to disguise my sureness that I would win a quick
and easy victory.
The temptation to gamble in my right hand there
and then was tremendous ; it required a superhuman
effort to refrain from doing so. Realizing that if I
revealed my right and missed, Beckett would perhaps
shake off the trouble to which he had been reduced,
I drew him to close quarters by backing on to the
ropes in front of the referee, Mr. Angle. My idea
in doing so was to try and discover the extent of
Beckett's qualities as an in-fighter. I had already
made certain that I was the better boxer, but so as
to make doubly sure that I would win if he was not
strongest at close quarters, I pretended, by setting
my back to the ropes, that I was in a tight corner.
Something like a leer came into Beckett's face
as he came flat-footed towards me, and with teeth
set tight he swung his left and right. I had so
arranged myself that there was no place on my face
or jaw he could strike ; this he appeared to realize,
and he made for my body. His eyes were shut ; he
did not look to see exactly what he was doing, and
so, instead of punching on a spot that mattered, I
dropped my arms and took the blows on my elbows.
He did not get one real, telling blow home, so I
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A Chapter on Frai^ois Descamps
skipped away from him and determined to wager
everything on my right. I felt that there was no
time to be lost, for I had convinced myself of these
two great things — that I was the better boxer and at
in-fighting I felt that Beckett was no wonder.
The ease and readiness with which I beat Beckett
is the only explanation I can offer for the widely
spread belief that I carry a " hypnotic punch." How
perfectly ridiculous !
But I find that even the unimaginative, tall,
awkward, all-cornered Gunboat Smith believes that
there is something uncanny about me and my
manager, for in an article which he has written about
my coming fight with Dempsey he warned the
American to steel himself against the machinations
of Descamps.
I grant that Descamps is weird when ranged
alongside his fellows ; he surely has a way with him,
but he is no hypnotist, though he is a past-master of
make-believe, and as such I am free to confess that
he has had much to do with winning many of my
matches.
In this way ; In match-making, in everything he
does outside of actual fighting, by his mannerisms,
his pomposity, if you will, his great sense of humour,
the mystical way he has of doing everything, his
outrageous dress — in my gymnasium, especially when
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My Fighting Life
visitors are present, he suggests something between
a golliwog and a Russian bear — causes all attention to
be focused upon him. He is Lord High Everything,
and for a purpose. By his eccentricity, which
eccentricity is more assumed than real, he causes
everybody to fasten their eyes upon him.
See him come to the ring-side as I am about to
appear. From my dressing-room he will come as
the leader of a triumphant procession, humming some
fantastic melody and carrying bottles, sponges,
towels, all manner of things — not in any matter-of-
fact way, but so as to suggest that he was the manu-
facturer of wonder-working contraptions and con-
coctions. See him cut an orange into halves.
Taking a murderous-looking knife from his
pocket, he will sharpen the blade on his hand, hold
up the fruit, and the while he mutters he slashes it
into two pieces, smiling fiendishly as if to spread the
impression that he has decapitated some mortal
enemy.
A bottle of mineral water he will uncork and sniff
at the contents. Having looked at it fondly, he will
snigger as if he were sure that he possessed a corpse-
reviver. On one occasion at the National Sporting
Club he was making play with a bottle of mineral
water when Mr. Douglas, who was the referee, asked
what it was. Obviously, he feared that it contained
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A Chapter on Frai^ois Descamps
some harmful dope. Descamps bowed gracefully and
took a swig at the water. " Tres bien! " he cried,
and Mr. Douglas returned to his seat amid much
laughter.
" Georges," Descamps once said to me, " some-
times I wonder whether you think I am crazy. I am,
but there is method in my craziness. I want every-
body to think I am crazy, for a crazy man, if he is not
too impossible, is interesting ; he causes all eyes to
be fixed on him. So when you fight, not only do
people say, ' What is Descamps up to ? ' but your
opponent also gets in that frame of mind that he
forgets you and can only think of me. So you win.
Eh? "
I shall never forget my first fight at which moving
pictures were taken. At the end of it there was some
very small trouble, and Descamps, picking up a
bottle, seemed likely to connect it with the head of
Monsieur Vienne, the first promoter in France.
When the hullabaloo had subsided, a mutual friend
asked Descamps why he had brandished the bottle as
if he were intent on murder.
" It was good for the pictures, eh? " was Des-
camps' explanation.
But seriously, whilst the hypnotic theory, so far
as I am concerned, is absurd, I do unhesitatingly
declare that more than one fight is won and lost
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My Fighting Life
because of personality. I would never dream of going
into a fight without first spending all my leisure
moments studying the type, the character, and the
mentality of the man I had been matched against.
Psychology enters into boxing in a greater degree,
perhaps, than any other game, and it is the student
of psychology, given the necessary physical qualities,
who will make most headway. It has been remarked
within recent times that the secret of the success and
the progress of boxing in France lies in perfect train-
ing. But this is not wholly true ; for while nine out of
every ten French boxers take the ring well, even
perfectly trained, every one of them has had impressed
upon him the value of close study of character, of
temperament, so that by a process of what I would
call boxing logic he is able to appreciate the type of
man against whom he is called upon to do battle. The
French school of boxing is not entirely distinctive,
but I consider it to be different from the English and
the American schools, because it is built on a com-
bination of styles and ways.
First, we have always striven to be our natural
selves ; we have clung to our newness, youthfulness,
and as a new boxing country we have taken to our-
selves a licence to be less stereotyped than the average
Britisher and American. When we set out to box
we went to Britain, and what we considered to be
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A Chapter on Francois Descamps
the best, the most efficacious methods we assimilated
greedily and thoroughly. When Americans were
appearing regularly in France we copied what we held
to be their strongest points, and sought to merge
them into our ideas, which sprang from naturalness
and a genuine, intense love for glove-fighting.
So as boxers we are partially French, British and
American. The fact that my country has provided
heavy, light-heavy, feather and bantam European
champions is because we have been able to make our
boxing typical of the best of three countries, and from
the first as little like machinery as possible.
What is termed "the fighting machine" does
not necessarily mean a man generously endowed with
those physical attributes a fighter must have ; my con-
ception of a "fighting machine" is a man who,
besides being hard and little susceptible to hurt, is
one who is steeped in the science of perfect hitting,
and, above all, one who, whether inside or outside the
ring, is always thinking and studying the science of
fighting. Fighting is a trade, a profession ; it means
a battle of wits and the survival of the fittest.
In my flat in Rue Brunei, Paris, I have collected
as many books on ring history and the lure of fighting
as possible. They have long been my companions.
From out of my library I, from time to time, take
this and that champion, and I seek to re-create that
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My Fighting Lite
which is laid down to be the secret of his greatness.
That which may be termed the personal side of the
giants of the ring I devour, just as I like to dwell
upon the idiosyncrasies of latter-day champions.
When I was a boy and Descamps was my only
teacher, he would, after my boxing lessons, tell me
of the men who made the ring the fascinating,
magical, human thing it is ; the coarseness of the ring,
the brutality of it, he would never enlarge upon ; only
of its romance, its arresting personalities would he
speak, and you who would apply to boxing a right
perspective — those, too, who would practise it — will
find in the books written upon it, and the men who
stand out as its chief exponents to-day, much food for
entertainment and instruction. Get hold of the
personal, the human side of boxing, and you will then
agree that the game is one of thrills.
224
CHAPTER XVII
MEN I HAVE FOUGHT
I WOULD write of some of the fighters I have fought
and others I have known.
Jim Driscoll I shall always consider to have been
one of the greatest of champions. It was not my
good fortune to see him at his best, but even now
there is no such stylist, no more perfect model of a
boxer in all the countries. It is sometimes said that
a boxer can scarcely hope to achieve greatness if he
has unusual imagination. Driscoll destroys any such
supposition. He has all the fire of his race ; his brain
is all life and sparkle ; his eyes are all light and bright-
ness; his form is a classical form; his face bespeaks
high intelligence. Driscoll was never a fighter in the
popular sense ; he was, and even in the winter of his
boxing days is, a wonderful man of boxing science.
He has been described as the personification of the
English school ; but not the English school as it is
to-day, for its members are given to running before
bhey can walk. They are not deep-thinking
students; they have never been taught as
Driscoll was taught. Charles Ledoux has told me
p 225
My Fighting Life
that never has he been so belittled as he was by
Driscoll.
This Ledoux, the majority of the critics say, is no
boxer — just a slogger. Ledoux can and does box
cleverly, but not like Driscoll. Driscoll was the king
of all boxers. From Driscoll, by a close study of his
ways, I learned the wisdom of always leading with
the left hand ; he taught me much about stance, and
how to time my blows so that they would have all
the weight of my body behind them. What a
different fighter Pal Moore, the American bantam,
would be if he had been taught and trained by
Driscoll i
In Moore we have a little man with the heart of
a giant, astonishingly fast on his feet; but he does
not know how to stand ; he does not know how to
hit. I witnessed his fight against Eugene Criqui at
the Albert Hall on Boxing Day last year, and nevei
have I seen a man who was able to come near tc
world's championship class so completely unable tc
hit straight and always with a closed glove. Moore
I regarded as a burlesque of boxing. Yet he won
He pranced and danced to victory ; he was the fire
work of the ring.
How different from the old English champion
Joe Bowker. He would skip and dart and dodge ii
a way bewildering, but .what a boxer ! And yet h<
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CARPENTIER IN FIGHTING TRIM
Men I Have Fought
lost to Ledoux at the National Sporting Club because
he was too clever. Having outboxed the pocket
Hercules of France, and when it was overwhelming
odds on his winning, Bowker turned his head so as
to convey to his seconds how easy was his task. He
dared to wink, and Ledoux hit him on the jaw and
took all the fight out of him. Bowker, I have always
suspected, was an incorrigible humorist.
But of all present-day English fighters surely there
is none comparable to Jimmy Wilde. None of us
will ever see the like of him again. As a boxer he is
an outrage on convention. Wilde belongs to no
school; he is all wrong, and yet supreme. For he
is a human shadow. Physically of not much account,
he is yet a man of steel. This is the pen picture I
would draw of this uncanny Welshman :
Baby-faced, with grey, dull, sleepy, little eyes;
hair thin ; a neck skinny ; arms like yard sticks, feet,
for his size, inordinately big, almost flat-footed. The
first time I beheld him it was impossible for me to
believe that he was the most wonderful fighter in the
world. Yet he was.
Wilde must be a man, in a boxing sense, of the
highest mental calibre. Men who have met him have
told me that he can hit as hard as many heavy-
weights; I know that his sense of distance is
marvellous, that although he affects no guard as a
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My Fighting Life
guard is understood to be, he has a defence that is
of the stoutest possible kind.
Wilde is not a " box of tricks," as Pedlar Palmer
was ; he is more of a phantom, for when a man would
hit him, oftener than not he is not there to be hit.
His power, his one-time invincibility came from his
brain. You would not think, as you noted his small,
leaden eyes, that he was able to take complete stock
of an opponent by one glance at him ; yet this he was
able to do, and no man within my memory, by skill
that was matchless, could so emphatically outwit an
opponent and make him do things he would believe
it were impossible to do.
Some young men who have seen Wilde have per-
haps tried to copy him. If they have, they will have
failed signally. Wilde is a freak — a wonder. I have
seen him when he has given to his left hand the
appearance of a piston-rod ; I have watched him when
he has tucked it away and aped the ways of a right-
handed fighter. Maybe Wilde has had his greatest
day, but as long as the ring lasts we shall surely
remember him as a pugilistic marvel, a speck of a
man — only just a trifle more than seven stone was he
when at his best — who was a veritable giant-killer.
Wilde, from the first day he wandered from the
South Wales coal-fields, was the David of the ring,
and he slew not one, but many Goliaths.
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Men I Have Fought
Wilde, however, is only a little less wonderful than
my countryman Ledoux ; not as a boxer, for the
Welshman, if he so wills, is a perfect boxer, and this
Ledoux has never been, but as a fighter. Ledoux has
been well termed "the human cyclone." A more
fearless, merciless boxer I do not know. I have seen
him when he has stood up under terrific punishment ;
I have looked on when he has been reduced to a totter-
ing man, but I have never known him to be robbed of
his strength. I have seen him go into the last round
half -blinded, when he has been torn and battered, and
he has fought with tigerish ferocity and won a fight
in the last minute by sheer determination. I doubt
whether there is a bantam alive who can and does hit
harder than he. There is none who gambles so
furiously in his stamina .without decreasing his hitting
power.
As I have stated, when I could do the bantam
limit, I fought Ledoux and won, but to this day I shall
never forget the punishment I received. In the ring
Ledoux is terrible ; he has been called the " apache " ;
but do you know that a more docile man never .walked
abroad. He has two beings — one all fierceness, the
other all softness.
A strange, rare mixture is Ledoux. I shall always
remember his first fight in Paris after his demobiliza-
tion. He arrived at the Cirque de Paris with his good
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My Fighting Life
wife, and was for all the world like a man out on a
shopping expedition. Ledoux speaks softly, almost
timidly, and yet he is a monster among the world's
bantams.
During a recent visit to London, in a discussion
with Mr. A. F. Bettinson, the manager of the
National Sporting Club, on the heavy-weight cham-
pionship, he ventured to express the opinion, shared
by many competent judges, that although Langford
suffered from lack of height, he would probably have
beaten Jack Johnson. As a twelve-stone man, Lang-
ford in his prime was unquestionably the best in the
world. The physical make-up of most negroes
touches the extraordinary, but in many respects
Langford was unlike any other human being, white or
black, I have ever seen.
His head was as a shining, highly burnished can-
non ball, and I am sure as hard. His nose was of
spread-eagled pattern ; his arms were gorilla-like.
Standing bolt upright he could almost touch his
calves ; his back suggested a wall of coal ; his chest was
prodigious ; in height he was ridiculously small.
Langford had as quick an eye as any man the ring
has known, and there never was a more aggressive
two-handed fighter ; and his reach was almost pheno-
menal. Whether he would have beaten Jack
Johnson must always be a matter of speculation, but
230
Men I Have Fought
I do not think there is such a heavy-.weight as
Langford was.
There is a good story of Langford. Not so very
long ago, when brought out of virtual retirement, he
was put up against a brother negro. It was arranged
that there would be no knock-out blow ; the affair,
which was one of six rounds, was to go the limit, and
was to take the form of an exhibition.
In the second round Langford received a terrific
blow on the jaw, and down he went flat. His brother,
negro exulted accordingly, believing that he had
knocked Sam out. But Langford scrambled to his
feet, and almost simultaneously the bell went. The
round was over. Coming into the next round, Lang-
ford walked to his man and shook him cordially by
the hand.
66 Say," said he, " this ain't the last round, Sam."
"Oh, yes," replied Langford, " guess it is; cer-
tain it is. It is the very last round, believe me."
And it was, for Langford promptly stretched the
nigger on the floor of the ring.
Langford, Jeannette, McVea and Johnson are
the last of the great black fighters. This, because
Johnson has made it so. Whites and blacks for the
world's championship will never again meet after
Reno. Johnson knew it. Of that I am certain, and
no one will be sorry. I have never drawn the colour
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My Fighting Life
line, and if such a man as Jeannette were in the ring
to-day I should be more than half inclined to meet
him. But we know of no Jeannette now, and,
besides, following what happened after Johnson had
laid low the shell of the real Jim Jeffries, clashing of
colours is not conducive to the good of the game, and
yet if a black man were champion to-day I should, in
my present frame of mind, court a match with him.
On the eve of the Grand Prix in June, 1914, I
was prevailed upon to act as referee of the fight in
Paris between Johnson and Frank Moran, who began
life as a dentist in Pittsburg. I had never seen
Johnson in action, and I gladly accepted the position
offered to me by both fighters and their managers.
Johnson had, by the fastness of his life, eaten away
much of his ability, but I am sure that before he lost
his balance he must have been an extraordinarily great
pugilist. Physically, he had everything in his favour,
but never, as I watched him, have I known a man
wrho was so difficult to hit. Moran was no wonder
worker ; he was just strong, and a sort of ironclad, but
he ,was no ordinary feeble pugilist. In his right hand
he carried a sure knock-out blow. The accepted
character of Johnson makes him out to be a particu-
larly obtuse and objectionable fellow ; as I saw him
in Paris in 1914 I thought he was more vain than
wicked.
232
Men I Have Fought
Against Moran he was certainly not a vicious
fighter. There was in him much of the cat wheri
it has a mouse ; he was tantalising. He mauled
and clawed Moran, and for ever did he chide his
opponent because he was helpless. Johnson would
have him at his mercy, and then let him run loose to
pick him up and make him smart and wince. There
was no necessity for him to carry the fight to his
opponent. With him, against Moran, it was, " Now
let me see whether you can hit me."
Moran, grey-faced, red-haired, would press all
the blood out of his lips and come helter-skelter after
Johnson and strike out savagely. Johnson with,
" That's good ; try again, Frank," would calmly catch
the blow on his glove, as would a baseball player take
the ball. Johnson was the shiftiest, and in a defen-
sive game the cleverest, the most cunning fighter I
have seen. And he found it possible to do his fighting
the while he chatted and prattled.
I have often wondered what would have happened
to Wells had his match with Johnson not been
scotched by the London police authorities. I can
picture Johnson, flashing his teeth of diamonds and
gold, going to the Bombardier as he sat in his corner
and saying, " Mistah Bombardier Wells, I suppose.
Wai, this nig is little Arthur Jack Johnson. Ise
sorry, Mistah, if Ise spoil your good looks, but Ise
233
My Fighting Life
not going to hurt you — oh, no ! But I guess you'll
be a wise guy if you say your prayers."
Johnson was a master of taunts, and I can picture
my friend Wells fuming and fidgeting and also beaten
before he stood up.
When he met Tommy Burns at Rushcutter's Bay,
Sydney, Johnson was unbeatable.
Although Johnson in the one fight in which I saw
him — that against Frank Moran — impressed me most
by his defensive qualities, and he came to be written
down as a non-aggressive and purely defensive fighter,
I think the world generally only regarded him as such
because neither Tommy Burns nor Jim Jeffries hajd
it in him to force him to attack for all he was worth.
But Johnson was a man with a kink, and this came
from his vanity. He was conceited, but his conceit
had at least some humour in it. With a weakness
for the employment of words of an uncommon length,
and as chief of the Malaprops, he always seemed to
me to be most concerned in making some new and
particularly vitriolic taunt.
Perhaps it would not be suspected, but it is never-
theless a fact, that when fighting had to be done he
was the soul of good temper and playfulness ; and yet
there was in him much viciousness.
Pat O'Keeffe, the retired British middle-weight
champion, whom I knocked out in two rounds at Nice
234
Men I Have Fought
in January, 1914, could tell some delightful stories
about Johnson. O'Keeffe, it will perhaps be remem-
bered, was in Johnson's corner at Rushcutter's Bay.
When Burns appeared, Johnson, who was execrated
by Burns, went over to him and said, " Hallo,
Tahmmy. Guess you've got some nice dressing-
gown. But, I say, dat's the dressing-gown for a
picnic."
Now, it was always held until that day at Sydney
that Burns was king among sharp-tongued pugilists,
but he lost by many miles in the game of repartee to
Johnson.
I did not see that fight, but O'Keeffe, a dear,
delightful old man of the ring, were he to give you his
description of Johnson as he was and as he behaved
against the then world's champion, would convince
you, as he convinced me, that if Johnson had cared
he could have ended the fight in the first round. To
have done so would not have suited his purpose ; in a
studied, fiendish way Johnson was cruel. He pur-
posely toyed with Burns, and before he hit him he
would say, " Tahmmy, now I am going to hit you.
Look!"
And Johnson always did what he threatened to
do.
I do believe that the only occasion on which John-
son lost his temper in the ring was when, after beating
235
My Fighting Life
the resurrected Jeffries, he met the late Stanley
Ketchell, a much lighter man, as you who know
boxing will recollect, but very much a wonder, if I
have read the stories of his fights aright.
I have often pictured Ketchell as another Kid
McCoy, spruce, dapper, something of a dandy and a
lady-killer. It has always been my belief that John-
son consented to meet Ketchell because, if it were a
ridiculous match — I have an idea that all parties took
the result for granted — Johnson had to win on points.
Now, Ketchell evidently had other notions, for in
the fight's infancy he saw his opportunity to slap
Johnson on the chin, and he embraced it.
Ping ! and Johnson was sent flying on his back.
Roars and great glee, of course, for Johnson was
never popular ; no man in the history of the ring was
so given to burning his boats. But Johnson was not
out, as was hoped and believed ; he just shook his
head, set his gold teeth blazing, jumped to his feet,
and Stanley Ketchell was no more.
When I sat at the ringside and watched Johnson
against Moran, I thought he was maddening in the
casual way in which he caught a blow from Moran ;
I do believe that had he cared he could have prevented
his opponent putting a glove upon him ; had it suited
his purpose he could have ended the fight when he
pleased. That it went twenty rounds was because it
236
Men I Have Fought
suited him to make it last so long; he appeared to
take a ghoulish pleasure in showing how severe were
the limitations of Moran.
I confess that although at the time Johnson was
nothing like the man he was when he fought Burns,
I should have thought long and deeply before trying
to take his title from him, and I suffered to be tempted
when it was suggested that I might take my chances
against him. As a matter of fact, after a conference
with Descamps, I decided that if I beat Jeannette in
a thoroughly convincing way, I would challenge John-
son. Jeannette was to serve as a trial horse.
Perhaps it is as well that Franz Reichel declared
that I was the loser at Lunar Park, for upon reflec-
tion it is possible, nay probable, that I would have
suffered a severe set-back. Yet in a way my contest
with Jeannette intensified my desire, my ambition to
go all out for the world's title, and had I not won my
match writh Gunboat Smith on a foul — that is, if I
had been declared the winner when I had the Ameri-
can on the floor for thirteen seconds — Descamps
would have thrown down the gauntlet, as per
arrangement. In 1914 I was absolutely at my best.
I am not one to harbour regrets, but I do believe
that had not the war come I should have tried for the
.world's championship by the time I was twenty-one.
But whether or no, I should have been so financially
237
My Fighting Life
strong that I would have been in a position to have
retired from the ring when I had gained my majority.
At nineteen I was a millionaire in francs ; in two more
years, at the rate at which money was then coming
to me, I should have had a second million.
Still, my five years of soldiering, if it meant my
income being reduced from tens of thousands of
pounds a year to a sou a day, was worth it. I found
new manhood in the Army of my country ; I read a
new book on life ; the war took me to great humanity.
And it may be, had not the war snatched from me
all but a skeleton of the fortune I had in 1914, 1 would
not have returned to the ring. The lure of fighting
will never desert me ; I feel that I was meant to be a
fighter, but until I came through my contest with
Dick Smith I only saw the necessity of fighting. Then
the mad shouts of praise that followed my victory
over this gallant English soldier made my passion to
box and fight greater than ever.
I have, in writing about the psychology of boxers,
treated with Bombardier Wells; I have sought to
visualize Papke, Klaus, Jeannette, Johnson and
others, but a pugilist about whom I have not yet
written, save by the way, is Young Ahearn, whose
real name, I understand, is Woodward. There was
in England, as was natural after my defeat of Bom-
bardier Wells and my victory over Gunboat Smith,
238 *
Men I Have Fought
a wholehearted desire to see whether there was not
an Englishman who could stay the boxing progress
of France.
Almost immediately after my battle with Smith
certain English sportsmen, headed by Mr. Horatio
Bottomley, decided that of all Britishers likely to
lower my colours this Ahearn, otherwise Woodward,
.who by birth was a Lancastrian, was the one. He
was a middle-weight, and he came to capture the
hearts of the English by a swift and dramatic victory
over Sergeant Braddock, who in the war won the
Distinguished Conduct Medal.
If there ever was a fighter to the last gasp, as
distinct from a boxer, that man was Braddock. In
strength, character, courage and physique he was
made for the game of fighting, and when he appeared
at the National Sporting Club he began his contest
with Ahearn as if possessed by fury, as if he were
intent on little short of murder.
Ahearn withstood his onslaught without turning
a hair; by almost matchless skill, it was declared, he
caused Braddock to get into a tangle, and then
quickly, surely, he hammered him into defeat. " The
best man since Ted Pritchard," it was said of Ahearn.
I knew much of Ahearn. Many times had I seen
him in Paris, for he was under the same manager as
Jeannette — Mr. Dan McKettrick. How I should
239
My Fighting Life
have fared against Ahearn it .would be ridiculous to
say, but I am sure the contest, had not the war caused
it to be abandoned, would have been a great one, for
Ahearn, not inaptly, was described as a human flash.
When I volunteered for war I agreed, as soon as
hostilities ceased, to meet him; but Ahearn, shortly
after his return to America, lost all his form, and
what has become of him I do not know.
However, as everybody knows, it was Beckett
against whom I defended my heavy-weight title, not
Ahearn, not Bombardier Wells, who, I was certain,
would have been my first opponent in London. I am
sure Wells will not mind my saying so, but when we
boxers who had been in the Army began to prepare
for the ring again he told me in his quiet, gentle,
sincere way that he was a new and splendidly different
man — stronger, he said, and nerves all gone. When
I look back and realize that Wells is still clutching for
the position which, by reason of his boxing skill, he
should hold, his " discovery " that he had " fighting
blood " was truly pathetic. Of all the men I have
fought and known, there is none who would give me
greater pleasure than Wells if he were to come into
his kingdom. That I, his friend, should doubt
whether he will turn his physical qualities into such
practical account as to become champion again may
seem strange, but after his display against Beckett,
240
Men I Have Fought
how can one suppose that he has the fighting morale ?
Various writers, in offering an explanation of the
position of Wells, have said that he is too imaginative,
and these same writers predicted a victory of Beckett
against me because they said, " Here we have a
fighter who is not troubled with imagination."
But must a boxer be a dull, unimaginative person?
I grant that there is no place in pugilism for the
hyper-sensitive or the neurotic person. A fighter
must have iron in his soul ; he must let the brute that
is in every man have his freedom when in the ring,
but he must have the mind, with sufficient imagina-
tion in it to let the brute loose only at the psycho-
logical moment ; he must, when victory is at hand, go
all out to win — not to win by battering, but by hitting
his opponent so hard, so surely, and in the most vul-
nerable spot that he will win by inflicting a minimum
amount of pain.
I agree that it were hard to imagine two men more
unlike in every conceivable respect than Beckett and
Wells ; Beckett needs no advertisement to make
known his profession ; indubitably Wells does. But
really, are they so markedly dissimilar as appearances
and point of view and general physical make-up
suggest they are ?
We have all talked about the " hypnotic touch,"
the " Indian sign " at some time or another, but what
Q 241
My Fighting Life
we strictly mean is personality. When I saw Beckett
against Wells I was .with the English writers who
put much store on the fact that Beckett had no
imagination, for on that occasion no one could or
would have suspected that he even dreamed of any-
thing else but fighting ; but since then I have had it
forced upon me that Wells, by his manner, by his
carriage, by even such little apparent nothings as
plucking at his gloves and staring at the cinema lights
and making a whispered request for a drink before
the fight began, encouraged Beckett in his belief that
he already had the contest won. Wells is without
what I call personality — a fighting personality ; what
the man-in-the-street will have as the " Indian sign,"
or what one English critic suggested I possessed —
the power to hypnotize.
Now, Beckett, if he ever thought or studied Wells
at all, knew that the Bombardier when he confronted
him would not and could not have attempted to play
any role other than that of a very nice and engaging,
but wholly uncharacteristic Englishman.
And Wells, instead of peering into nothingness
and finding it difficult to sit still the while prelimin-
aries were completed, had he laughed and joked
and assumed a don't-care-a-hang-I-am-bound-to-win
manner, the probability is that Beckett, even though,
as is said, he is unimaginative, would have fallen to
242
Men I Have Fought
saying, " What's up with Wells? Fancy the Bom-
bardier relishing the idea of tackling me ! ' Beckett
would have been puzzled to know what had come over
Wells. He is the type of man it is not difficult to
make believe that you have found some special, new-
fangled blow. A beaming, joyous, happy, confident
Wells would be a revelation; he would certainly
have been a revelation to Beckett, and he would as
such, I think, have won, because he would have had
a personality — a personality which would have blotted
out Beckett.
I have said that Wells is without a personality ;
I mean that strong, forceful, impelling something
which we call character, but which in modern boxing
parlance is designated "the Indian sign," or if we
are to take the maker of catchy phrases seriously,
" the hypnotic touch." If we were to obliterate " the
Indian sign," " the hypnotic touch," and treat with
and study psychology, the public who are bitten with
the ring would come to have a better and finer appre-
ciation of the importance of those differences in
fighters which are psychological and not merely
physical.
It has been said that I would always beat both.
I believe I would. But not by means of the " Indian
sign " or the " hypnotic touch " ; not because I am
a dabbler in "black magic," but because I have so
243
My Fighting Life
analysed the temperament of these two men that I
believe I can convince them that I possess a strength
greater than I actually have, and a something which
they have not.
I have said that I do not think that Beckett and
Wells are so dissimilar as they appear to be. And I
think I say that which is very true. Wells has not
the faculty that permits him to disguise the fact that
he is nervous ; Beckett, unless you watch him closely,
appears to have this faculty. But those who took
stock of him when he came into the ring at the Hoi-
born Stadium will say with me that he was very
agitated, and they will say, too, that he was not the
unimaginative oak-like man he had been pictured.
The first thing I set myself to do after I had
shaken hands with him and hoped that he was very
well, was to watch every little movement, though I
suggested to those who were looking on that I had
no other thought except to see that I affixed my
bandages securely. But I followed him with my
eyes nevertheless, so did Descamps; and when
Beckett, before he took the chair in his corner, began
to describe semicircles in his walk around and
scratched the resined floor, as it were, with his foot,
I whispered to Wilson, my masseur, as he invited
me to put a hand in a glove, " This Beckett is
nervous."
244
Men I Have Fought
From the first time 1 saw Beckett I wondered
whether I would cause him to think that I had the
more towering personality. I sought to discover
this in many ways. On my first acquaintance with
him I decided that it was true what his countrymen
said of him, that he had no patience with anything
but actual fighting. When he came to spar with his
brother George in Paris he was a very phlegmatic,
stern, stubborn, practical Beckett, but during my
training at Stanmore and on the occasions when I
went to the Holborn Stadium to see the weekly
boxing shows there I thought I detected a change in
his demeanour. He never lost his confidence in him-
self, but the more polite I sought to be the more
uncomfortable did he become ; he wanted to get away
from me.
Gradually I forced whatever personality I had on
to him until he became irritable. The same with Mr.
Bernard Mortimer. I caused one of my friends to
go to Southampton and say to him, " Have you seen
Carpentier at work yet? ' The reply was, " No.
We are not troubling about him, and Joe does not
want to see him until he gets into the ring." Little
feelers of this kind were most helpful to me, and I so
got on to the mind of Beckett as to become an obses-
sion. I neither employed the " Indian sign" nor
the " hypnotic touch."
245
My Fighting Life
I qualified to meet Dempsey because of three
important factors : (1) Perfect and happy training ;
(2) a careful and successful cultivation of indifference
and sangfroid, which came to be mistaken (how
laughable!) for " hypnotism"; (3) a strict and the
closest regard for the rules which make for correct
and orthodox boxing. And there I .will leave my
fight with Beckett.
Of the methods I pursue in training, I think these
are already well known. I have always insisted that
I should be a law unto myself. I have, of course,
certain fixed principles, and they take this form. I
begin by spending days in the open. I do not start
upon strenuous work right away. There is nothing
so calculated to produce mental unsettledness than by
switching oneself from comparative leisure to hard,
unceasing toil. So when I set up camp my first busi-
ness— or, rather, that of my manager — is to make the
best selection of sparring partners — men who will
suppose that it is they ,who are about to prepare for a
fight — and introduce them to a home from honje.
In this way a happy family is made, and then we all
roam or run about the countryside. We get up
running races, we devise all manner of games that
have nothing to do with fighting ; simply do we seek
to re-create boyhood's days, and when we have got
that .which we seek — the feeling of gladness which
246
Men I Have Fought
springs from health and a contented mind — actual
training for fighting begins.
In my gymnasium you will find a heavy sack
suspended from the ceiling. If you saw it and sup-
posed that I set about punching it you .would be
wrong. The sack is set swinging and made to
describe all sorts of fantastic capers, so as to serve to
quicken my footwork. At Manitot it was "the
Bombardier " ; at La Guerche, and later at Stanmore,
it was " Beckett."
There are some days when I fear that I am work-
ing too hard, so I go to Descamps and my sparring
partners and say, " To-day we go shooting," or
according to the season, " We will give fighting a
rest. It's fishing to-day."
The whole aim of a boxer, as that of any man
,who is seeking to make himself fit for some test of
physical endurance, should be to obtain as much dis-
traction as possible. A fighter especially must, above
all things, make sure that the mind is entertained, and
it can never be entertained if it is not distracted and
so kept severely apart from monotony.
Imperfect training means that a man has forced
himself into training ; that because of its very same-
ness he has sickened of it. Come with me one
afternoon, when I am getting ready for a fight, and
see me and my sparring partners helping Descamps
247
My Fighting Life
out with a new song. A pugilist, having left his
novitiate days behind, does not — at least, I do not —
when he gives himself over to training, strive after
improving his boxing. His business is to build up
his physique so that it will reach the highest standard
of physical excellence. Training is certainly hard
work, but it was never intended to mean long, colour-
less, nauseating days. Destroy your naturalness by
leading an unnatural life and you destroy your
humanity, and this destroyed you have destroyed your
fighting qualities.
Nothing amused me so much during my stay at
Stanmore than when one well-meaning, bountiful
gentleman arrived at my hotel groaning under the
weight of half a side of bacon, a small sack of pota-
toes, half a dozen fowls, and a hare.
" And why these presents? " I asked.
" It's no good your thinking of meeting Beckett
unless you feed up," he answered. " The more you
eat the better."
" But if I gobbled all these I should die," I
protested.
And the kind, benevolent gentleman looked very
distressed.
The impression is abroad that a prize-fighter must
of necessity be fed as if he were one of your excellent
English turkeys; and do you know, the fact that
248
M. AND MME. GEORGES GARPENTIER IN THEIR
PARIS FLAT
Men I Have Fought
because I did not ask for, neither did I revel in,
Gargantuan feasts at Stanmore, it came to be said
that I was in a decline.
I just eat and drink what I like, as much as I
like, and no more. And that is the way I get fit
and keep fit.
What is my favourite punch? That with which
I won my fight with Beckett — any punch that I can
drive home and so achieve success. I cannot say
that I have any particular punch that may be called
a speciality.
When I enter into a fight I do so with an open
mind. I set my brain working so that in the shortest
possible time I might discover the weak and strong
points of the man I am up against. Then, having
taken what I consider to be a complete estimate of
him, I decide upon the course of action which I think
will take me to victory. That is, I force myself to
believe that if I can punch this way or that I can end
the fight.
I found out what to do against Beckett in the first
two seconds ; that was when I discovered there was a
clear, uninterrupted way along which to send my left
hand. If an opponent cannot keep out of the way
of your left hand, it is certain he cannot close the door
to the right, and when you have found out this, go
out to win at once ; let there be no waiting, no dally-
249
My Fighting Life
ing; spare neither your man nor yourself. Do the
obvious thing. Strive with all your might to knock
him out.
It is the greatest possible mistake, in my opinion,
for any boxer to decide what he will do before he gets
into the ring. He must fashion his ways according
to how his opponent seeks to shape the fight. From
the day I dared to take my chances against all heavy-
weights, I have been conscious that there would be
times when I would be called upon to shoulder very
considerable handicaps, for I am not a big man as
heavy-weights go — by the side of Fulton, Willard,
Moran, Wells and Beckett I am little — and if I am
to attain the ambition of my life it will not be because
of sheer strength or gigantic frame, but by holding
hard to those principles that have won for me a
qualification to meet Dempsey.
I had scarcely reached my dressing-room and
taken my gloves off, when Descamps, by now very
much the first clown of a pantomime, jumped upon
a chair and to a crowd of people, who managed to
squeeze themselves into the room, said in his best
clowning manner, "Gentlemen, pardon! I intro-
duce to you Georges Carpentier — next year the
champion of the world. To-night's show is over.
Throw your pennies into the hat and please go home."
And when we .were alone Descamps would for
250
Men I Have Fought
ever be saying, " Dempsey, Georges, eh? Georges
Carpentier, champion of champions ; Professor
Descamps, manager of managers ! Oh, yes, Deinp-
sey, Dempsey, Dempsey, Jack Dempsey ! '
On the morning after the fight with Beckett,
Descamps, who had never thought of bed, was abroad
early, doing much business; and when he appeared
at the breakfast-table he already had a note-book full
of engagements for me.
" We go everywhere," he whispered ; " France,
north, south, east and west ; many places in Belgium ;
to Italy — then to America."
Since I beat Beckett no man/ could have had a
more delightful experience. I have travelled farther
afield than ever before, and I have met with only
great good fortune and kindness.
" Blink " McClosky came out of retirement and
fought me at Bordeaux. The old man was no more
after the beginning of the second round, and until
I get into the ring against Dempsey I shall have no
really serious opponent. But before I try for the
greatest and most momentous prize in my life I shall
have visited Los Angeles for the purpose of making a
film, and I shall have travelled over a large part of
Europe.
At the moment of writing, no definite date or
place has been fixed for a battle with Dempsey.
251
My Fighting Life
After I had won against Beckett, Descamps on my
behalf completed a compact that I had tentatively
entered into with Mr. C. B. Cochran, and signed a
contract by which I consented to meet the world's
champion under that gentleman's auspices. This I
made known before I returned to France after my
triumph at the Holborn Stadium, but within a few
hours after it, offers from promoters simply showered
upon me. Descamps has got a whole room full of
them. I must confess that some of them have come
from men who have neither the money nor the busi-
ness acumen to stage a fight for the world's
championship.
You have been regaled with all manner of state-
ments as to when and where the fight will take place,
but we (that is, Descamps and myself) have yet to
get to grips with Dempsey and his manager, Jack
Kearns.
I am, of course, hoping that Mr. Cochran will be
able to put the fight on in London. That he has been
generous enough in the matter of purse everybody will
agree, but if he fails to secure Dempsey's signature
and the champion will not defend his title in Europe,
then I will fight him in America. We are bound to
meet. I, as the challenger, would not dare to
stipulate where the fight must be. It is up to Jack
Dempsey. Should he ask for the battle-ground to be
252
Men I Have Fought
pitched in the States, I go to America. Wherever
the fight takes place, it will be a mighty one. I look
to it not as I would a personal matter. I await it as a
Frenchman who would always fight for his country.
I will fight for France, and if I go down, I will go
down with my jaws set tight ; with all my fighting
blood boiling and surging ; and in the full conscious-
ness that I met a better man.
My study of Dempsey began the day after my
fight with Beckett. It will not be finished until one
of us has won.
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